


The Tower

by noncorporealform



Series: Arcana [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Allusions to War Atrocities, Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Horror, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Chronic Illness, F/M, First Time, M/M, Mental Institutions, Necromancy, Paranormal, Possession, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Steve Stays Skinny, Tarot, Temporary Character Death, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-15 09:35:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 75,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4601814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noncorporealform/pseuds/noncorporealform
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy Carter recruits Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes to fight against Baron Zemo, a man who desires the powers of the entity that has taken a liking to Steve Rogers. The Howling Commandos search Europe for artifacts with the mission to retrieve them before Zemo's Secret Empire can, but the Baron is ruthless and patient, willing to play the long game. </p>
<p>As the world explodes into a war seeped in occult forces and lead by madmen, Bucky has to admit for his own peace of mind that he's always loved Steve Rogers and would follow him into any kind of war, no matter how strange.</p>
<p>Horror AU set in World War II.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally written for the 2k14 steve/bucky big bang, but I deleted it a little while ago. I can't believe I actually get to say that I've brought it back by popular demand. It's already written (it will be about 75k) but I don't think it's edited enough, so I will be posting chapters through a span of a few days as I make it really nice. As always, thank you for your comments and kudos, especially the ones that found me and brought me back. 
> 
> 9/29/2016 - Fic has been thoroughly re-edited to remove errors.
> 
> Here's the original art from the BB! My artist did an amazing job: [first](http://hereidreamtiwasanartist.tumblr.com/post/102954269541/heres-the-first-of-the-2-paintings-i-did-for) | [second](http://hereidreamtiwasanartist.tumblr.com/post/102954491261/the-second-painting-for-sarahlucielles-fic-the)
> 
> Thanks to my original betas, sweetmarigold and sophistibithin on tumblr.

_Divine fire destroys only what is evil and purifies and refines what is good.  - Eden Gray, A Complete Guide to the Tarot: Key 16, The Tower_

 

**_ Bucky _ **

  

  

**Brooklyn--January, 1943**

The trash cans in the alley clattered and fell over when Bucky tripped in the dark. Inside the apartment building a dog barked, sharp and loud. It probably wasn’t smart to be running in the dark, but if he didn’t run, he’d go crazy. He was trying to make up time for all the standing in line, and the family he let cut in in front of him.

He was unlocking the door to the apartment, but the bulb over the back stoop was out, and he struggled with the lock to the back entrance. A light came on two floors up, a golden square in the black alley. The pane slid up and a woman with her hair twisted in pink ribbons stuck her head out.

“It’s one in the blessed a.m.!” she shouted. “Is that Bucky Barnes? What are you doing, young man?”

“Help me,” Bucky said in a croak. “Back door’s jammed again. It’s Steve. His fever, it--“

Her eyes flew wide open, caught the light in pinpricks. His heart fell onto the alleyway floor at the sight of her fear, but he still tried, begging her to help.

“I’m sorry, son. I can’t, I--I’ve got a boy. A baby boy. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Bucky yelled one final “please” but the pane came down with a finality that wouldn’t be broached. The golden light switched off, and the dog continued to bark.

Bucky dropped his key and had to follow the sound until he felt it with blind, searching hands. A car passed, throwing light at the door, and he snatched the silver glint that he saw. He shoved the key into the difficult lock. The swollen door burst open after a shove with his shoulder.

He heard Steve’s labored breathing when he entered the apartment. Bucky cringed at the sound of lungs full of water that sputtered with every breath, but there was comfort in the fact that it meant that Steve was still breathing.

“I told you I’d get it,” Bucky announced, even if he had no idea if Steve could even hear him. “It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay. I’m gonna get you feeling just fine. To hell with what those doctors said.”

He pulled the bag of medicine out of his pocket. He dashed to the kitchen and arranged each bottle and vial on the table in their breakfast nook. He made sure everything was there.

Bucky grabbed onto the edge of their breakfast table. He could see himself, after hours of not knowing why he was this moody about something so common. The panic made no sense. Steve being knocked back by the flu or a bad cold, even the unaccounted for fevers, had never scared him.

Something was different. He could feel it.

 _It’s gonna be okay,_ Bucky thought. _I’m gonna make this okay_.

The nurse had told him that a lukewarm bath would bring it down, but not to let his skin get cold. He dashed into the bathroom, ran the water, and put on the hot tap. He made a mental inventory of all the items he had in the kitchen, and laid out towels and a thermometer. He was grateful for Sarah Rogers, who had the patience of a saint while teaching Bucky to use basic medicine on a day when he had been unruly and needed a task. It was almost like she knew that night were inevitable.

Bucky listened to the noise of the water flowing into the tub as he scrambled back to the couch. Steve was laying with his face pressed into the cushions. When Bucky touched him, he moaned. Steve’s skin was radiating heat better than their actual radiator had in the whole of January.

“Jesus, Steve,” Bucky said. “Why’d you have to let it get this bad?”

He stripped Steve of all his clothes. They were heavy with sweat, and they reeked like sickness. Steve was so limp that it was like picking up a ragdoll cat.

Bucky carried Steve over the threshold of the bathroom door as delicately as if he were a new bride. He leaned over the tub and tested the water. The water was just  €“turned lukewarm, and Bucky couldn’t wait any longer.

“I’m really sorry about this,” Bucky said.

Steve opened his eyes for just a second, looking at Bucky, recognizing him for the first time since the fever hit one-hundred and four. They were questioning, having no idea what was coming.

Steve yelled as he was lowered into the water. He struggled as if he were drowning, but the water was barely two feet deep. Bucky told him to hold his breath, and he tilted Steve’s head back to dunk his forehead under the water for a few seconds before pulling him back up. Steve sputtered and coughed up the little water he had swallowed. It made his wet cough sound even worse.

Bucky had his hand on Steve’s chest and he could feel a strange rhythm where there should have been a steady beat. It was odd, quick, tapping against the ribcage which held it. Feeling the rhythm under his hands made Bucky’s own heart feel like it would stop completely.

He moved Steve to sit up by himself, preparing for the next step the nurse had shown him. He took out the thermometer, the dry and damp cloths, and the warm blankets he was getting ready to wrap Steve in.

Then he got a look at Steve’s face.

He remembered his Grandma Maggie, back with his family in Iowa when he was a little kid, the way she had looked just before she passed away. It was the exact same look on Steve’s face right then. Whatever Steve was seeing, it was a long way away.

Then he wasn’t looking at anything at all.

“ _No_ ,” Bucky said in a breath.

He reached into the tub, grabbed Steve’s neck, searching for a heartbeat under his jaw. Nothing. The other side of the neck. Nothing.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he said like a litany.

Water splashed on him as he dragged Steve out of the tub, his white shirt-sleeves becoming transparent. He couldn’t feel the cold as the winter chill got into the water, not then. Steve’s dripping body was limp against his chest as he cradled it. He pushed Steve’s hair away from his face to search for a reaction.

Steve wasn’t looking out of that face anymore. Nothing was.

“No.”

Bucky felt his knees protesting at the pressure and the cold of kneeling on the wet linoleum, but he couldn’t care. A slackness hung Steve’s face, and a quiet surrounded him. There should have been noise, and stubborn tension in his brow. Bucky wanted to know why Steve was so different, his eyes hollow and removed from the dim sadness Bucky saw so often, but without the joy Bucky tried to put in its place.

Steve was dead.

Steve was dead and he was holding his corpse.

“No,” he said, one more time. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Brooklyn--May, 1943**

“You leavin’ already?” Diane asked, as Bucky kissed her on the cheek.

Bucky pulled himself out of the circle of her arms and stood up. They had been lying on the couch for a while. The movie and the walk around the park had been nice, and they’d ended up back at her place. She lived with her folks, but they were in Yonkers, visiting cousins, so she’d brought him over after the movie.

Bucky never knew why he stopped. He liked the dates, and he certainly liked it when he got around to the kissing. But when Diane had reached for his waist, unbuttoned the top button of his trousers, Bucky didn’t feel like going on to what people wanted next. He never did.

“I would stay, but--,” Bucky began, gathering his blue coat from where he’d left it on the armchair. “I have things to do real early in the morning, and if we get too involved, well--“

“I can get you up real early,” she said with a smile. “I cook a mean piece of toast.”

Bucky laughed, slid into the coat. She stood up, wandered over and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She laid a kiss down on his mouth, long, lingering. Bucky liked the smell of her perfume, and whatever she used in her shiny, brown hair.

“Don’t you like me?” she asked.

“I do,” Bucky said. It wasn’t a lie.

“Then what’s the problem?”

Bucky smiled, pressed his forehead against hers.

“Did you have a good time tonight?” Bucky asked.

“Of course.”

“Good. I’m glad,” he said, and ran a knuckle across her jaw. “I’ll see you around, doll.”

Bucky left the brownstone and stepped into the night. It was still warm, the air nice, so Bucky pulled off his jacket and tucked it under his shoulder.

He stepped aside as two kids ran past, laughing and holding hands--a sailor and his girl. He heard music coming out of a diner with only two people in it, both old men. He remembered the tune from years back: _Pennies from Heaven_. He thought about getting a bite to eat in there, but he knew he had food at home he ought to use before he had to throw too much out.

His mind wandered, from trying to remember if he had bread, or if he’d want to make the rest of the meat he had left, maybe with some potatoes, if those were still good.

His mind wanted to think about what to do with the week he had left. He wondered what there was in New York he hadn’t experienced yet, or wanted to see one more time, since not having wandered far from Brooklyn after his folks had settled there. And then his thoughts moved to Steve, wondering if he would have liked to have gone to the World’s Fair if he had still been around--before promptly making himself drop those thoughts. They just made him angry, like he could itch off his skin.

Movies, he decided. He’d go to the movies again the next day.

Knowing he was just a block away from his place, he dug around in his pockets for his key, found it under the stub for the film and his handkerchief. Then he heard it. The shouts, and the sounds of flesh hitting flesh.

“What the hell are you doing snoopin’ around here?” he heard someone say. “You look like some kind of creep.”

“Lemme go!” came a distant cry. “You don’t get it! I’m tryin’ to help! I’m warning you!”

Bucky’s skin prickled and his eyes narrowed.

There were three of them and he didn’t quite see who they were holding, but he had a pretty good guess.

“Hey!” Bucky said. “What the hell is goin’ on here?”

Two tall guys, and a third shorter, broad man, stopped as he entered the alley. Bucky marched up. They parted.

Bucky saw who they were cornering. He was held in the arms of one of the tall ones, and his golf jacket was pulled up and gathered around his shoulders. His arms were out and his lower body was down, like a toddler trying not to be held.

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve said.

“Steve?” Bucky said. “Steve, where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick!”

He had been. And there had been something else. Bucky had thought he been walking around with anger, of all things, tucked inside him like an unwelcome houseguest. In that moment, staring at the disheveled man who smiled with blood in the corner of his mouth, Bucky knew it wasn’t anger that had made him obsess over thoughts of what he’d say if he saw Steve again.

He had been missing him, and Bucky had to smile to hide the sting of it. Steve smiled back. Bucky hoped like hell he wasn’t as transparent as he felt.

“Mind your own business, you corn-pone Mick,” the shorter bully said, shoving Bucky’s shoulder.

Bucky decked him hard enough that it put him on the ground, the flat sound of his fist against the guy’s face echoing in the alley. The closest of the tall men came at him and Bucky untucked his coat from under his arm and threw it over the guy's face. Stunned by sudden blindness, Bucky took the chance to punch him in the gut.

In the back, Steve was twisting out of his coat and managed to trip up the last of them. The other tall bully fell flat onto his face, like a plummeting tree. He started to crawl forward but there was too much length to him to be quick about it. As the other two were already fleeing, Bucky came around and kicked the last of them in the ass. They fled, shouting threats about a “next time” as they turned the corner and disappeared.

They scrambled away and Bucky collected his coat from the ground. Steve was struggling back up and Bucky grabbed Steve’s jacket off the ground and held it out for him to take. Steve stumbled forward and retrieved it.

Something small dropped out of the pocket--it was one of Steve’s moleskine sketchbooks. It was beat up, as usual, the pages thick the way they got after Steve had been drawing in them for a while. Steve’s eyes went wide with worry when he saw it, so Bucky picked it up handed it back to him.

“Still tryin’ to steal my thunder,” Steve said, stuffing the sketchbook back into his pocket.

“I just can’t help myself,” Bucky said.

“It’s good to see you, Buck.”

“I would hope so. It’s been three months. You know, I wondered where--“

“ _Shh_.”

Bucky reeled, and glared at Steve.

“What are you shushing me for?” Bucky snapped.

“Bucky, be quiet,” Steve ordered.

There was a sound from the back of the alley. A scrape, metal against asphalt; Bucky guessed it was someone moving a trash can, but then it came again, and then a rattle and a clang. That was way too much commotion, even for a chore done in the dark.

Bucky was used to animals making fusses in alleys, knocking things down, sometimes howling and spitting as they fought with each other. Brooklyn was no stranger to stray dogs and cats, the odd raccoon, and even the occasional freakishly huge rat. But the way the hair stood up on the back of Bucky’s neck made him pause. There was something else going on, and Bucky was used to trusting his instincts. He looked at Steve.

Steve’s eyes were wide. Breath came out of Steve’s mouth in a puff of hazy fog. A wave of cold hit Bucky like a heavy blanket of ice had been thrown on him, and his breath appeared like cigarette smoke. In spring. On a night warm enough that Bucky had remembered taking off his jacket after sundown.

“Bucky--,” he heard Steve say. A warning, his name said with an entire sentence behind it.

That sentence was _don’t move, and don’t turn around_. But Bucky had already seen it.

Out of the corner of his eye--a shadow. It might have been the shadow of a tall man, but there was nothing to cast it and Bucky had the terrible feeling that it was solid. He knew he shouldn’t turn his head, shouldn’t let it be anything but something spooking him out of the corner of his eye. Steve had warned him.

Bucky looked.

The shadow collapsed out of its man-like shape, and transformed into lines and shapes that moved like the shadows in his apartment when a car went past in the dark. But there was no car, no moving light at all. Bucky staggered back as a whisper of wind went through the alley. It was everywhere, a wall of black moving against brick.

“Get out of here,” Steve said.

“Like hell,” Bucky said and grabbed Steve by the shoulder.

He took a few steps backward, dragging Steve along.

Steve ripped his shoulder out of Bucky’s grip and ran towards the shadow.  Bucky ran after him.

The sounds of the city disappeared as a whisper filled the alley, like all of New York had been muffled with a pillow.

The breath was like a sigh, with babbling underneath it, and then an inhale. He couldn’t hear anything except their own footsteps and the disembodied breath. Bucky’s eyes went wide as he saw the debris of the alley floating in the air. Pieces of broken pallet, trash, garbage cans were just hanging there like they’d been hung on a string and brought to life for a puppet show.

He froze as he realized it was all about to be flung at him.

Steve tugged Bucky down to the ground by the collar of his shirt. A bright, white light filled the alley. Bucky closed his eyes against the brilliance. He heard the clattering of metal and wood, flinched, bracing for the impact. The clattering stopped.

Bucky's eyes opened by degrees, but were wide in the next second. He had seen the source of light. Steve was holding it.

More accurately, it had appeared on Steve's arm as if he were holding it.

It was a shield, round, made of white light. It flickered and disappeared, and in its absence Bucky saw the debris piled behind it. The ragged, broken shards of debris would have gone through them like a toothpick through a BLT without it.

He turned to look at Steve, their faces just inches apart. When Bucky’s face fell into a frown, Steve could only smile through the agony of unspoken apology.

The shadow moved again, but not just against the walls. It was nearly on top of them. The shadow had returned to the shape of a man, but a man with legs and arms that were too long, and those limbs came down to a point like knitting needles. The end of its limbs didn’t seem like they really could touch anything, wouldn’t have been able to make him stand up straight any more than an octopus could have stood on the tips of its tentacles to walk on land. Its stride was as purposeful and strong as a soldier’s.

It was Steve that grabbed Bucky by the arm next, moving them towards the alleyway entrance.

“What the hell is that?” Bucky began to ramble. “Steve? Steve, what the hell--?”

“Can’t explain right now,” Steve answered, his voice sharp.

“We gotta run.”

“No. You go.”

“ _Steve_.”

“I’m not runnin’.”

And then it had eyes. Two perfect circles, white, like holes punched into the shadow, and on the other side of those holes was Somewhere Else. That somewhere else felt like a place Bucky had been and never wanted to go again. The fear in him in that moment was ancient, from ancestors that scraped on rocks and hid from the things that prowled the dark.

“Nope,” Bucky said.

Bucky grabbed Steve around the chest with both arms, not caring how much kicking and screaming the kid was doing, and got him out of the alley. Behind them, the trash crashed and clanged. Debris exploded out of the entrance, just as they’d rounded the corner, like the alley had gotten sick on garbage and was throwing it up. The shadow, no longer like a man but rather a streak of black, dashed out of the alley and away. It darted up into the sky, across the roofs of Brooklyn, until it was gone.

“God _damn it_ ,” Steve yelled as he tore himself out of Bucky’s arms.

Steve stumbled away, braced his hands on his knees as he struggled to stand.

“Steve--?” Bucky began.

“I almost had him. I could have gotten the bastard, I had him, I--“

Bucky just stared at Steve, watched him go through a familiar upset. Every time Bucky knew the fight was too much but Steve didn’t, it was like this. The having to drag him away and Steve being pissed at him for doing it for a while after; it was just like the good old days.

Steve’s exhales almost sounded like they were going to turn into sobs. Then he straightened up, rubbing his face out of frustration. Bucky waited for Steve to compose himself.

He did, and turned back to Bucky. Bucky’s eyes went wide and he held out his arms and pulled a face, another wordless _what the hell?_

The anger melted off of Steve’s face. Shame took its place.

#

Bucky wanted to ask him a million questions.

Steve stared at the bottle of Coke in his hands. Steve didn’t seem to really want to say anything, which had turned the sharpness of Bucky’s anger into a dull knife-edge, unable to cut. It was always like that after Steve did something reckless.

The muffled sound of the news coming from the little radio in the kitchen made the empty diner seem like it belonged in another world, one safer than the one outside. It was the most private place Bucky had been able to think of for them to go and talk, with the exception of Bucky’s apartment. They would have gone there, but Bucky didn’t think he could quite handle the familiarity of Steve back in the apartment they had shared.

“So that, uh--,” Bucky began.

“I know a bit about them,” Steve said. “They’re called Shadow People. You find mention of them everywhere, people seeing them out of the corner of their eye, in the room when they’re trying to fall asleep or wake up. I didn’t know until recently they could actually, you know, attack.”

There was a long silence as Bucky stared across the table at Steve, his mouth a straight line.

“What the hell, Steve?” Bucky said.

“It’s complicated,” Steve tried.

“I’m a smart guy, I’ll try to keep up.”

Steve sighed, rubbing his forehead.

“Really, Steve, what happened?” he asked. “Where have you been for three months that I ain’t heard a word from you, and then you show up with this dragging behind you?”

He wasn’t asking about the shadow anymore.

In his head, Bucky was sure that there would be a bite to his voice when he finally confronted Steve. He’d pictured really give the kid a piece of his mind, pictured it every time he turned a corner and had the instinct that he might see Steve in his familiar haunts. But after a few months of imagining a tirade where he demanded to know where Steve had gone without him, his voice came out soft, a gentle tug rather than a demanding jerk.   Being mad at Steve, really mad, was only a thing that was possible in his imagination.

“I had to go away for a bit,” Steve admitted.

“You went on vacation?” Bucky joked. “Without me? I’m hurt. What’d you do, take a train to Atlantic City and--“

  ”I was at Bellevue.”

Bucky froze, his face falling. He pictured that big hospital in Manhattan, and then remembered the rumors about it. Those state institutions always had stories.

“You should have told me,” Bucky said. “I would have visited.”

“I wrote you,” Steve said.

“I didn’t get any mail from you.”

“I know. That’s half the reason I left. I wrote a letter every week. Then every week they told me I had no mail. They lied to me a lot. Didn’t like it much.”

“If I’d have known, you know I’d have been there.”

“I’m a little glad, though. I didn’t want you to be there.”

Bucky was usually good at hiding the way things stung him, but he realized too late that he hadn’t caught himself. Steve’s eyes went wide, and then the rambling started up.

“No, I don’t mean--,” Steve said. “I didn’t mean like I didn’t want you around at all--I mean--I did want you to be there. I wished I could talk to you or get a letter from you. I thought about it every day. But I didn’t want you to--Bucky, I wasn’t sick like--“

“I know. You were in psych.”

“Yeah.”

“Steve. _Why didn’t you tell me_? No, not the letters, why didn’t you tell me in the first place? What did you think I would do? Hide you away and be ashamed of you like some rich family with a daffy uncle? All I knew was what you told me. You said you wanted to live alone for a while. But just petered out after that, I didn’t even know your new address, and you never came around. I just figured you were done with--“

Bucky swallowed the rest of the sentence.

“I don’t know--,” Steve admitted

“But you’re okay, right?” Bucky asked. “They let you out.”

Steve’s smile was marred by nervousness as he held up his left arm, pulled back the sleeve of his shirt to reveal the medical bracelet that hadn’t been cut off. Bucky sighed, put his face in his hands.

“You should have got me on the phone,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, well, I decided to visit instead,” Steve said and looked around to see if any of the sparse crowd of people had seen the bracelet before covering it back up. Steve’s eye caught something, and then let whatever it was he spotted go to look back at Bucky.

“So you’re still a cuckoo bird, huh?” Bucky asked.

“No, I just--I figured out that I never was,” Steve replied. “Didn’t want to have to wait for the doctors to agree, so--“

Steve shrugged and squirmed in his seat. The silence between them stretched. Bucky had never known them to share silence that was uncomfortable.

“You don’t have to tell me, you know,” Bucky said, although his voice strained to agree to his own terms. “If you just had your time there, and you’re good, but you don’t wanna say anything, you don’t have to talk. I just wish you would.”

Steve scoffed, shook his head.

“You know, I thought of a million different ways to tell you this,” Steve said. “It’s not even in the letters, wherever those are. Nothing sounded right in my head, but I thought if I just knew the right way to tell you--“

Bucky’s stomach was twisted like a wet rag, and the more Steve refused to say anything the more he felt the squeeze of it. He wanted to grab Steve by the shoulders, shake the truth out of him.

“This gonna explain what I saw in that alley?” Bucky asked.   “How about that thing that just--what was that? That thing that protected you.”

Bucky watched Steve struggle for the words, and Bucky could see Steve putting it all together in his head.

“Do you remember when I had that fever?” Steve finally said. “This January, the bad one.”

Bucky felt the water on his skin, chilling him, and the weight of Steve in his arms.

“Of course I do,” Bucky said, and smiled to get past the memory. “You gave me a scare with that one.”

“I don’t remember being sick,” Steve said. He scratched his temple absently. “It’s just a big black spot when I try to think about it. But I remember after coming out of it, I just felt strange. All the time. Like I’d wandered into someplace I had no business being in, even though I was still in Brooklyn. I know every brick in this place, but it was like I’d been dropped off somewhere with no clue where I was.

“Then I started--I started seeing these people around and I had these bad feelings. You know, like you know you’re gonna get a bad phone call, and then the phone rings and it’s a bad phone call.”

Steve rolled his eyes, fell back against the booth. He smiled out of one side of his mouth, laughed. Whatever Steve was about to say, even he found it ridiculous.

“I saw other things, things that weren’t necessarily like people. Those were always starting at me, same as the strangers. I couldn’t handle the way they looked at me. That made me feel crazier than anything. I knew what they were from the start--I knew they were dead. Took me a while to be able to admit that I knew it, though.”

The way Steve fell back against the diner booth and dropped his head, shaking it in shame, made Bucky know there was worse coming. Bucky straightened his spine, prepared.

“Then they started coming after me,” Steve said. “I’ve been attacked a few times. Even in our old apartment. I never can tell if they come for me, or if they were always there. But they find me. They hate me. Nothin’ does that much damage unless they hate something a lot.”

Bucky felt his veins fill with liquid fire. The rage pressed against his skull, behind his forehead, and he wanted to shout. He let it pass, the heat of it cooling like a breeze had passed over sweaty skin.

“Is that everything?” Bucky asked after the silence stretched.

“No,” Steve said, his voice deep in its certainty.

_How is there more_? Bucky wondered, wanting to swear.

“You’ve probably been waiting to ask about the shield, huh?” Steve asked, a smile straining the corners of his eyes.

“Sure,” Bucky whispered.

It was just enough to give Steve permission to go on. In reality, it was what he had been wondering about the most, the desire to ask about it itching at his tongue.

Steve pulled out his moleskine, and he opened it. He flipped through the pages with a deliberate slowness, as though he could delay the inevitable.

Steve placed the open notebook on the table, turned it around, and pushed it towards Bucky.

Bucky picked up the notebook. He saw diagrams of circles within circles, stars and patterns, seeming to be making up an interconnected design. It was almost like a blueprint, and in the end it looked like the shield he had seen.

Bucky’s eyes flicked up and he gauged Steve’s comfort with sharing what was in his notebook. It was nil. Despite wanting to flip through it, Bucky simply handed the moleskine back.

“You got the designs from someplace,” Bucky guessed.

“From my head,” Steve said.

“So this was your idea.”

“Nope.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’m saying it was in my head. It just wasn’t _my_ idea. It didn’t come from me.”

Bucky sighed and dropped his head. He didn’t want to be frustrated, but he was.

“Steve, come on, just--,” Bucky pleaded.

“I got a voice in my head, Buck,” Steve said.

Bucky narrowed his eyes to stare hard at Steve, who wasn’t looking at him anymore. Steve was concentrated on the open pages of his book, like he was studying it.

“It’s not actually a voice,” Steve continued. “Just this presence, and then I get ideas of what I’m supposed to do. I started writing them down. I still don’t know what it is. It scared the hell out of me. So I checked myself in. I wasn’t going to have that around you. You’re all I have, you know? But it saved my life--the voice, I mean. I don’t know what it is, but it can’t be all bad if it gave me a shield, right?”

Bucky leaned forward, wrapping his hands around his own icy Coke bottle. He was too nervous to do anything else with them, afraid of his own tells. Steve still wasn’t looking at him, was just smiling and nodding his head like he had told a funny story he knew wasn’t that funny.

Steve finally lifted his head. There was a terrible, strained fear pulling at his face.

“You know that sounds nuts, right?” Bucky said.

Steve laughed with his whole face. His eyes were small and crinkled, his smile big. Bucky grinned back, did his damndest to make sure Steve couldn’t see his hurt. But he was glad at least he got Steve to laugh.

“More nuts than fighting shadows?” Steve said.

“Well, maybe not that bad,” Bucky said.

“Thank you for believing me.”

Steve gently rotated his Coke bottle with his fingers, but didn’t drink.

“You said you’re not crazy,” Bucky said. “What makes some headshrinker say he knows better than the smartest guy I know?”

“Besides yourself,” Steve said.

“Besides me, yeah.”

Steve’s eyes wandered, caught something, shot back.

“Bucky, we--,” Steve began.

“You tell me next time,” Bucky said. He heard the break in his own voice, the tone that was much more forceful that anywhere near where he had meant it to be. “You tell me.”

“Next time is now. I don’t like the way this guy’s looking at me. We oughtta leave.”

Bucky looked over at where Steve had glanced. The empty space in the corner was almost pulsing with its emptiness, the profoundness of how absolutely nothing was sitting there. He felt a tremor in his chest, and that same instinct to run he would get when he was in the attic in the house on the army base, which he’d told his folks was haunted for sure.

“Yup,” Bucky said, his eyebrows shooting up.

He laid a few cents on the table and grabbed his coat before rushing out of the diner.

#

Steve had ended up on the couch with a pile of Bucky’s blankets. He was still there when Bucky wandered out of his bedroom in the morning. Steve’s things had been moved out at the end of January, and Bucky hadn’t gotten somebody else to bunk with. So there was an extra bedroom, but the bed had gone with Steve.  

Bucky shook Steve awake, and it was the lightest Steve had ever slept by the way his eyes snapped open and his whole body jerked.

Bucky hadn’t realized how much his mornings had suffered in the past few months until Steve smiled up at him, said “hey” with a voice heavy with sleep, and rubbed his eyes.

“You want coffee?” Bucky asked.

“You got coffee?” Steve said, astonished.

Steve stumbled up and followed Bucky the few feet it took to get to the kitchen in the little apartment. He looked around in the morning light, finally saw what Bucky was afraid to explain the night before.

“I guess you’re moving?” Steve asked, in reference to all the things packed away in boxes or taped up for movers.

“Putting things in storage,” Bucky answered.

Then he reached into a cupboard and brought out a canvas sack.

“Oh my god,” Steve said, temporarily too amazed by the small miracle he was witnessing to ask more questions. “You really do have coffee.”

“I told you,” Bucky said, his smile a proud smirk.

“I thought they were really being sticklers about rationing this year.”

“Not to military guys.”

“You bought it from a soldier?”

“No, I uh--I enlisted. I guess that’s one of the perks I got for my troubles.”

Bucky smiled, but it was strained. He waited to hear Steve say something, to remind him how many men were dying, how insane the effort was getting.

Instead Steve’s face broke out into a smile. Of course it did. He’d never seen anybody look prouder, and it felt to Bucky like he was being stabbed in the heart. But Bucky’s smile and the blush of pride, those were real. Real as anything.

“It’s not a big deal,” Bucky said.

“I’m just--wow, Bucky.”

Staring at Steve’s admiration was like staring into the sun, so he soaked up as much of it as he could before looking away.

“Yeah, it took me long enough,” Bucky said with a shrug. “I just had to do something. It’s what my dad would’ve done.”

“I should be going with you.”

Bucky felt a dread in his heart at the deep self-hatred in Steve’s voice. He forced that feeling to sink. It wasn’t going to happen. Nobody would let it happen.

_It had better not happen_ , Bucky thought.

“Maybe next war,” Bucky said and grinned. “I mean with me there I’ll have the Nazis wiped up in no time, for sure. Sorry, but you missed your chance.”

“When do you leave?” Steve asked.

“Four days.”

That at least had shaken Steve. His eyes were wide, and his smile fell into a worried frown, his mouth slack and open.

“So soon?” Steve said.

“Sergeant James Barnes, with the 107th,” Bucky said. “I’ll be going to England, first thing.”

“The 107th?”

“I tried to find you and let you know, but--I was just gonna leave a letter for the landlord if you were gonna come around again after I’d shipped off.”

Steve couldn’t hide his disappointment, but it wasn’t with Bucky. Bucky had to remember that as great as the idea was of fighting beside Steve was, Steve couldn’t fight. He would fight in a second, against anything that caused his blood to boil, but he still hadn’t learned he can’t win every fight with willpower and his guts alone.

“Listen, Steve,” Bucky began.

There was a knock on the door. They both jumped and stared wide-eyed at it. Bucky put his finger to his lips and Steve nodded.

“Who is it?” Bucky yelled.

“Mr. Barnes? May we speak?” he heard a woman’s voice behind the door. “I’m with Bellevue Hospital Center. It’s urgent.”

Steve and Bucky locked eyes and they both saw the same thing in each other’s expressions.

“Don’t let me see where you’ve gone,” Bucky whispered. “You’ve got ten seconds.”

Steve shot away to hide, and Bucky turned to the door.

“Just a minute,” Bucky said, making a little bit of noise with how he was conspicuously coming to a pause in his preparations for breakfast.

He walked without urgency to the door, and unlatched the chain before unlocking and opening it.

A woman stood behind it, her smile sweet, but there was no sense of nonsense about her when she batted her eyes. It was pleasant, but broached no patience. Her brown hair was short and neatly styled, and she wore a simple wide-brimmed hat.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” Bucky asked.

“My name is Maggie Gaskill, and as I said, I’m from Bellevue hospital,” she said. He wasn’t expecting an English accent. “Is it alright if I come in? I’m a bit parched.”

“Come on in,” Bucky said and opened the door.

Gaskill came close to the open window and took off her hat. Bucky poured her a glass of water and she gave a sincere thanks. Bucky noticed it, then. On the table, Steve’s sketchbook. If it was one she recognized as Steve’s, they were in trouble.

“This isn’t about hospital bills or anything, is it?” Bucky asked and stood between the view of her and the moleskine. “Because you know, Manhattan’s a little far for me to go to get my check-up.”

“That’s not something you need to worry about. Do you know a Steven Rogers?”

Bucky jerked and his eyes went wide. It didn’t take much imagination to manufacture the strain of worry in his voice.

“Steve?” Bucky asked, his voice heavy with worry. “Is he in the hospital?”

“Not at the moment,” Gaskill said. “He listed you as his next of kin. Are you related?”

“We grew up together, so good as. Did something happen to him? Please, if he’s been hurt-- I haven’t seen him in months, he just sort of--“

“He’s not harmed, last we knew. He admitted himself for personal health reasons, which is all I can divulge. You understand.”

“Well, can I see him?”

“That’s the problem. He left without being discharged. We need to make sure he’s not in any danger.”

“What? You _lost him_? Steve Rogers? Same Steve Rogers I know? Little guy, can’t bench forty pounds?”

“Bellevue is not a prison.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve been waiting for him to write or call and he just--that kid’s gonna give me an ulcer.”

Bucky plopped down on the chair by the kitchen table and sighed. He rubbed his forehead and composed himself. Meanwhile he blocked the sight of the sketchbook with his arms.

“Do you have any idea why he left so suddenly? Or why he didn’t tell anyone he was checking into a hospital?” she asked.

Bucky shrugged, manufacturing desperate exasperation.

“Did something happen to him in March that might have led to his decision to seek medical help?” she asked.

Bucky felt something in him shake. That made the whole of February unaccounted for. He wanted to tremble, but she would see. You didn’t just get the chills for no reason when the weather was warm. He kept it under wraps, just shook his head. As he did so, he collected the exact wording of the tongue-lashing he was going to give Steve.

“He checked himself into the hospital in March?” Bucky asked. “Yeah, that’s about the time he stopped coming around. He said he wanted to have his own place. I only saw him every other day after he moved out, and then less, and then he just stopped coming by.”

“Well, another dead-end, I’m afraid. Here, this is my card,” Gaskill said, and then laid it on the table. “If he shows up, let us know. There is medicine he’s meant to be taking.”

“Miss--Gaskill was it?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I mean, for letting me know what happened to him. I wish I knew where he was now, I really do. I’m worried about that kid. All the time, actually. But it’s nice to know he wasn’t in some Hooverville or rat-infested flophouse.”

She said goodbye and left. Bucky put his ear to the door. When he heard her heel clicks disappear down the stairs, he turned around.

“ _Steve, god damn it_ ,” he whisper-shouted.

Bucky knew Steve couldn’t hear him, so he brought his fist up and banged on the wall three times. Steve might not have heard him, but if he was hiding where Bucky thought he was, Steve would feel the vibration.

The door to Steve’s empty old bedroom opened, and Steve stumbled out.

“What did she say?” he asked. “I couldn’t hear much of anything.”

Bucky wanted to yell, to ask him about the whole month he didn’t tell him about, but he took a deep breath through his nose.

“Nothing you didn’t tell me,” Bucky said.

When the words left his mouth, he knew it was a mistake. Lying to Steve was always like swallowing poison.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve began to gather his things. There wasn’t much, just what he had on him, and the sketchbook he’d left on the table. All that Steve seemed to own was his moleskine, and a wallet with two dollars and his ID. He had even grabbed his coat, even though it was too hot for one, tucking it under his arm.  He found Bucky’s spare key inside the bread-box.  

“You going somewhere?” Bucky asked.

“I have something to do,” Steve said. “It won’t take long.”

Steve started to walk towards the door but Bucky put his arm out and stopped him. Bucky took the brunt of Steve’s glare with ease, raising his eyebrows to show just how unimpressed he was.

“You’re off to do something spooky aren’t you?” Bucky said.

  ”This is something I have to do by myself,” Steve said.

“Don’t give me this lone gumshoe crap. You know all you gotta do is ask for my help.”

“You’re deploying in four days. You’ve got bigger things to think about.”

“Yeah, I will be thinking about pretty big stuff in four days. I need a nice, simple task to keep me occupied in the meantime. I figure the most familiar is to help your dumb ass. You got people who are obviously not who they say they are snooping around, let me at least watch your back.”

The hand Bucky had used to bring him to a halt grabbed and shook Steve’s shoulder. Steve smiled as he was jerked back and forth, the roughness familiar and kind.

“It’s just--I didn’t bust out of Bellevue just  ‘cause I had cabin fever,” Steve said.

“No, I didn’t think that was it,” Bucky said, his grin a little sad.

“One of the people in my ward, he had a son. Guy named Stein, Gerold Stein. His son is Gary Stein. Gerold was one of the only ones that believed I could really see the things I did. I didn’t even believe I was seeing the things I was seeing just then. Then he started getting these letters from his son. Things are going on Gary’s apartment, the kind of things that we both knew meant--well, it can’t be good. It got nasty, and he asked for my help.”

“Well, what did this guy think you could do for his son?”

“I’m not sure,” Steve said and his hand absently patted the sketchbook in his pocket. “I have an idea, though.”

#

The apartment was on the other side of the borough, on the top floor of one of the taller, new buildings.

Bucky was always telling people to back off when they said Steve couldn’t do simple things on account of his health. Their own landlord worried about them being five floors up with no elevator, even. Bucky knew Steve wasn’t made of glass, but when they reached the top floor and Steve looked winded, he felt a knot of worry in his gut.

“You alright?” Bucky asked.

“We’re here,” Steve answered.

Steve was breathing heavy, and and a few beads of sweat dotted his forehead. Bucky narrowed his eyes, but only when Steve wasn’t looking anymore.

Steve took a second to catch his breath, before smoothing his hair back into place. He grabbed the sketchbook out of his pocket and looked about to open it. A commotion came from behind the door and it distracted Steve enough that he dropped it. Bucky grabbed it for him, a basic instinct of his. He was about to hand it to Steve, but the door clicked and unlocked. Bucky held it by his side instead.

The man who opened the door had a panicked look in his eyes. He was wearing his shirt-sleeves rolled up under a loose vest, and he hadn’t taken off his shoes yet. He’d had pomade in his hair, so whatever nervous pulling he’d been doing to it had stuck it in a strange tangle.

“Steve Rogers?” the man asked. He held his hand out to Bucky. “Thank god you’re here.”

“Um--,” Bucky began.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Stein,” Steve said and held out his hand to be shaken. “This is my friend, Bucky.”

Stein looked disappointed, and it made the hair on the back of Bucky’s neck bristle. He could always tell when people were let down by Steve. He’d never understood. It was right there to look at, everything good about Steve, and it shouldn’t have been a thing people needed to have proven to them. But he knew Gary Stein only saw Steve as some weak little guy that might have been there to assist, but that was all.

“Well, come in,” Stein said, pushing his hair back at a last grab at dignity. He then displayed his hand, an apology for not being able to shake with a palm greased with old pomade. “I put the percolator on the stove.”

Bucky tucked the sketchbook into his front jacket pocket and nodded to Steve that he’d keep it for a second. Steve looked a little nervous, but he knew Bucky never looked in his sketchbooks unless he had permission.

The apartment was a broom cupboard. The kitchen and the living room were pretty much the same room and the furniture was crammed inside, most likely bought during better times in a larger place. There was a radio in the corner and Steve heard John Cage playing at the lowest volume. The couches were covered in blankets and pillows, as people had been sleeping on them. A door to one bedroom was just beyond the living room.

“I hate to pry,” Steve said. “But if you have people staying in the living room, you should tell me. I just gotta know how many people are in the apartment.”

“It's just us. I sleep out here with my daughter,” Stein said as he removed the rattling percolator from the stove and turned off the gas. “We used to share the bedroom, she’s got a little bed in there, but then things started happening at night. It happens less out here, so we sleep in the living room. How do you take it?”

“Black,” Steve said.

“Cream, three sugars,” Bucky said.

Stein brought them the coffee in a mismatched group of three mugs and set them on the coffee table, Bucky immediately grabbing his milky-colored one. He took a sip, but Steve just picked his up and didn’t drink.

“Where’s your daughter, Mr. Stein?” Bucky asked.

“Gary, please,” he said. “She’s with her aunt. She’s going to have communion soon, so she’s spending a little bit more time at church. Really, I want her to be out of the house as much as possible these days.”

“Can I go into the room?” Steve asked.

Stein nervously moved his fingers across the hot mug, like he was trying to shake something off his hands.

“Can you give me a minute? I gotta prepare myself every time I wanna go in there. But--sorry, kid, it’s just, you look about twelve, I gotta ask if there’s some way you can--can you prove you can do what they say you can do?”

“If I could do that, I’d probably be in a lab somewhere,” Steve said with a laugh. “I just want to help. It was the last thing your father asked me to do.”

Stein nodded, and his brow was heavy.

An eerie feeling ran up Bucky’s spine. He looked at the door that led to the bedroom. Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was like it was staring him in the face, but Bucky couldn’t recognize it. He was about to turn to Steve, to tell him they ought to make some excuse to leave, but Steve had put his mug back on the table and stood up.

There was a noise from inside the bedroom--a sound like tapping, and the three of them went still.

“If you just give me a minute,” Stein said, stuttering, putting down his own mug and spilling hot coffee on his own hands.

“I can go in alone,” Steve said as he moved to stand in front of the door.

Bucky stood up, following, in case Steve needed him. Then he noticed. The thing that had been bugging him, but that he couldn’t put his finger on.

Where were the signs of a little girl living there at all?

There were two sets of blankets on two couches where two people would have slept. They were all grey and blue sheets, big enough for grown men. But Bucky remembered what it was like living with other kids; he remembered _being_ a kid. There were things they had, and those things took over everything. Their own blankets, toys, stuffed animals, the detritus on the floor seemingly for the pure purpose of an adult stepping on it and howling. It was just a pillow and the same blanket that was in the other bed.

Steve opened the door before Bucky could tell him to wait.

Bucky was able to see the man in the tan hat reach out and grab Steve by the neck before Bucky saw stars and everything went black.

#

The voices sounded like they were coming from underwater. They were muffled and he couldn’t tell how far away they were.

Opening his eyes and seeing a face right next to his answered that question. The man was moving his mouth, and he assumed that explained the muffly word-like sounds.

“Steve?” Bucky mumbled.

He saw the man’s face come into focus. Too round, and much too mustachey to be Steve. Also about thirty years older, with bourbon breath.

“Come on son, get up,” said the man, and the tone wasn’t friendly.

He was pulled up so unceremoniously that he thought his arm was going to come out of his socket. He pushed himself away from the man, pure instinct, but all that got him was turned around and shoved up against the wall. He felt handcuffs clamp on to his wrists.

“Where’s Steve?” Bucky asked.

“Who’s Steve?” the cop asked.

“Steve?”

Then he remembered, the hand coming out of the dark room, a tan hat, Steve’s body jerking at the force of it.

“Steve!”

Bucky whipped his head around. He could see the entire small apartment as his eyes focused. The door to the bedroom was open. The only other person he saw was another officer taking a look inside the bedroom.

“Come on, kid,” said the cop. “Hope you got a good case for breaking and entering, because with how many of those there have been in this neighborhood, I don’t think things look so good for you.”

#

“I want to report a kidnapping,” Bucky said again.

The policeman had introduced himself as Sergeant Leopold about an hour earlier. They already had Bucky’s full name out of his wallet, and it wasn’t long until they’d had someone run over some records from his old school and his enlistment forms and orders. Despite there being nothing in it, Bucky was still handcuffed to the same chair he’d been in since he got to the station. He was thirsty, he was tired, his ass hurt only slightly less than his head.

“Is this thing yours?” Leopold asked, holding out the sketchbook. It was closed and wrapped, the pages and pen inside seeming to want to burst out of the moleskine binding.

“Yeah, that’s mine,” Bucky lied.

“You mind explaining to me what the hell any of the crap inside it means?”

“I want to report a kidnapping.”

“Look kid, you’ve never been in trouble with the law,” Leopold said after a heavy sigh. “You want to keep it that way? Be able to stay in the army? Have a future? Maybe you want to tell me a little more about what happened.”

“I want to report a kidnapping.”

“Son--“

“I want to report a kidnapping.”

“How about a deal?”

Bucky glowered at Leopold, who was leaning over his desk with exhaustion at that point.

“I want to report a kidnapping,” Bucky said again.

“I will report the missing person on one condition,” said Leopold. “Once I send it out, you tell me everything about why you were in that apartment, why it was trashed, and why you were unconscious and the only one in it.”

Bucky leveled his eyes under lowered brows.

“I want to report a kidnapping,” he said, one last time.

Leopold raised a hand, made eye contact with someone far away. A man in a police uniform brought over a pad of yellow paper.

“What’s the name of the person who you believe has been abducted?”

“Steve Rogers. Blond hair, blue eyes, ninety-five pounds, five foot three inches, health problems, born July 4th, 1918. Before I saw him today he was admitted at Bellevue Health Center.”

“What makes you so sure he was kidnapped?”

“I saw someone grab him and I woke up alone, that’s how.”

“Do you have any idea why someone would grab your friend?”

“ €¦No.”

“If you lie to me, it’s going to be harder to find him.”

“I don’t know.”

“If you’re in some kind of hot water, we have ways of helping people.”

“It’s not that easy to explain.”

“Try me.”

#

Bucky laid in lockup, his arm thrown over his head so the bright light they never turned off wouldn’t keep him from sleeping. He couldn’t sleep anyway. He kept trying to put together his memory.

Gary Stein he hadn’t forgotten. The man in the tan hat was harder to put together. His face had been half-obscured, and there was nothing interesting about him. No scars or moles, no tattoos or marks. He didn’t even catch what hair color he’d had, or what his eyes looked like.

Bucky tried to remember, put together some image. There was nothing, no matter how hard he tried to reconstruct. He was just a man in a tan hat.

While they looked into Bucky’s story--a complete lie of course, about Steve trying to help Gerold Stein’s son with some bad debt--they decided they couldn’t just cut him loose. So his first official charge on record was breaking and entering. Bucky had gotten into plenty of trouble in his time, but this was the first time he had ever been booked. It was usually the sisters at his school or Brooklyn cops he knew that would rap him on the knuckles and send him on his way. Bucky had always feared the disappointment of his folks than any punishment from the law. But these cops, Bucky didn’t know.

Leopold didn’t believe his story. There was no way he would book him if he had. He was chasing whatever leads he could, going after this Stein guy. Of course nobody had ever rented that apartment under the name Stein. The last tenant had paid his rent for two months and the landlord hadn’t seen him since, and wasn’t going to bother someone who was already paid up and got no complaints from the neighbors.

So Bucky waited, and he thought. No plans yet, though. That would have to wait for information.

He heard the doors of the cell open and he lifted his head. Leopold stood in the open door.

“You’re free to go,” Leopold said.

“Did you find him?” Bucky asked as he marched out of the cell. Another officer was there with his coat, his wallet, his watch, and his keys. Then Leopold, standing behind him, handed the moleskine to Bucky. Bucky had to pull it out of his hands so hard Leopold’s fingers made a snap as the cover was pulled out of his grip.

“Go home,” Leopold said.

“Did you do anything?” Bucky asked.

“I don’t want to see your face again. Wait for your whack-job friend to wander home after he climbs out of whatever bottle he’s in, kid.”

Bucky scowled. If Leopold had been anyone else, he’d have decked him.

#

Bucky waited until he was away from the police station. By the time he’d gotten far enough, the streets were also a lot less crowded. It was the middle of the week, and people had already gone to work, and it wasn’t quite lunchtime yet. He was sure nobody had been given the orders to tail him when he didn’t pick up any signs. There was a little bench under a tree in a small park near his old neighborhood, when he and Steve lived with his folks. He sat down and he pulled the moleskine out of his jacket pocket.

He held it in his hands, just looked at the beat-up, black cardboard cover. He didn’t want to open it. Steve probably wouldn’t have shown it to him yet. He didn’t like himself for what he was about to do, but he unwound the string that was holding it together and let it fall open.

He was used to bright drawings from Steve, studies and ideas. People in Steve’s eyes were always bright, sparkling things he wanted to show smiling, full of life. He was even used to silly little cartoons, things Steve doodled while bored.

These pictures were dark, made of big, heavy brushstrokes of black ink, or smudges of charcoal. Bucky could tell that was the only way he could get a proper hold on what these things looked like.

The dead glared out at him from the pages, their faces latent with the threat in their eyes. Every single one of them had the same, accusing expression. Bucky realized that this was what Steve had meant when he said they were always staring. Bucky’s stomach dropped at the thought of Steve being followed by things that looked at him like that every day.

The things that weren’t human, though--the ones that weren’t ghosts, that could never have been people--Bucky turned the pages, again and again. He couldn’t let his eyes rest on those ones. He didn’t want to think about them.

In the middle of the sketchbook, the designs began. Designs and sketches made not just of symbols, but words, too. Some of it was plain English at first, but then it was jumbled. The army training he’d had so far told him that it was code, had to be. Steve had felt the need to make a cipher. He grinned a little at the thought of the doctors at Bellevue trying to look at Steve’s sketchbook for clues on how to treat him, only to pass it off as jibberish. Nobody took Steve for a clever guy. That annoyed Bucky, but it had its advantages.

The diagrams, those were the strangest. It was like Steve was trying to figure something out, make the right graphs and shapes. Then he saw it, the diagram for the shield, and saw something he hadn’t noticed when Steve had first shown it to him. Above it, it said “for protection.”

There were a couple of versions of it. Different sized circles, with all kinds of symbols on them. Bucky didn’t recognize most of them, but a few of them he recognized from the horoscopes in the paper. Then there was the final version. It was round, circles within circles, and a five-pointed star in the center. The thing made of light that he’d seen Steve summon out of thin air.

The final pages took Bucky by surprise. It was almost a relief, to see the images of soldiers. They were sad, but it was better than the hate out of the eyes of the dead. He felt the brush-stroke of Steve's usual sympathy and admiration.

He snapped the moleskine shut.

Valuable. What he was holding in his hands was valuable. If it were only a little of what was inside of Steve’s head, that made Steve valuable, too. Bucky just didn’t know to whom. Not yet.


	4. Chapter 4

It took Bucky two days to get wind of Gary Stein. Bucky never used the name Stein, but he started describing him, saying where he’d been seen, and by sheer luck, someone visiting family from across town had seen someone who might have been him. Just this side of too tall, nervous, fidgety, sweats a lot, had a funny streak of grey you saw sometimes if he parted his hair right. He’d been seen at some rec center before he said was going to a flophouse just a few blocks up.

Bucky went into a second-hand shop, grabbed the most beat-up jacket he could find, and he wasted no more time heading to the flophouse. He thought he maybe looked too clean standing in the doorway, talking the sister behind reception into letting him have a bed. He got one, got inside, and started wandering.

Nobody looked at him. No eye contact, no matter how Bucky would look right into people’s faces. The fellas in this place knew better than to get noticed. But nobody had started circulating whispers about him. If they’d really thought there was something fishy about him, there would be signs of people bugging out. Bucky just wandered about, like he was looking for an empty bed amongst the rows and rows of filth-encrusted cots.

He even went up to the top floor, where there was nothing but the shadiest of men around tables, no sign of anybody meant to actually sleep in there, but there was no sign of Stein.

He spent a little more time milling, just to be sure. Then he decided he’d call it a day, maybe start making like a private dick at the train station. He went down to the lobby and he almost stumbled coming off the bottom step when he saw Stein trying to get a bed for the night.

Bucky turned his head and tucked as much of his face behind an upturned collar as he could and sidled out of Stein’s line of sight. He listened as Gary Stein explained how badly he needed to keep staying there, while the sister running the house tried to explain, with the patience he wished the sisters at his school would have had, that they were all full and there was nothing she could do, especially if he had no money.

As Bucky came closer and closer, he realized he had forgotten what comes after this. What was the plan? Make a citizen’s arrest? Kick him in the ass? Or one and then the other? All he was thinking is that he was looking at the son of a bitch that could get Steve back. Everything else was inconsequential, as far as Bucky was concerned.

Stein looked around, his neck twisting like a ferret’s and Bucky turned his head away. He could still see Stein out of the corner of his eyes. Something had caught Stein’s attention, and Bucky saw what it was. He was looking down.

Bucky could have kicked himself. The shoes. He’d bought them just a week ago. They were too nice for anyone that belonged in this place. The big, ugly coat wasn’t doing shit.

Stein lifted his eyes to look at him and Bucky turned to meet his gaze. He saw the recognition in Stein’s eyes the second before he bolted.

Bucky didn’t even make a decision to run. It was just what he did, an instinct to run after; like a big cat, those mountain lions out west, that’ll run after whatever sprints away. Even the people on the street outside were little more than phantoms as they flashed by. His vision was like a spotlight and all he saw was Stein.

Stein had the idea to get away by going through an alley. Bucky followed him into a short path, and Stein hopped a solid fence. Bucky didn’t follow over top--he took a left and then a right, then another right.

Stein didn’t see him as he came from the side, because he’d been watching the fence, holding a stick he’d found on the ground, ready to bash Bucky when he leapt over the fence. Instead Bucky came up from the tiny slot between buildings behind Stein and punched him hard in the kidney.

“This is my neighborhood, moron,” Bucky said

He tore the stick out of his hand as he crumpled to the ground. He kicked Stein behind the knees for good measure when he saw him trying to get up.

“Wait, please,” Stein begged, covering his face with his open palms.

Bucky grabbed Stein by the front of his dirty tan jacket. He pulled their faces close. Bucky thought about what the scariest thing he could say to Stein could be at that precise moment. And then Bucky realized he was scared of himself, of how pissed he was now that he had his hands on this bastard.

So he just let it show on his face. And that was lucky for Stein, because it worked like a charm.

“I didn’t know they were fixing to kidnap your friend, I swear,” Stein begged.

“You’re gonna have to do better than that,” Bucky said between gritted teeth.

“I had debt. A man from my club, I told him about my kooky dad, and the even kookier guy he knew in Bellevue. The one that sees ghosts, hears voices. He said these guys he knew could help me out with my debt if I just arranged for them to meet. They got me set up in this apartment, and told me to wait for this Rogers guy. He warned me not to disappoint them. I agreed before I knew who they were. It was just, it was so much money. But I ain’t even seen a dime of it, the bastards.”

“I don’t give a shit about your tale of woe. Get to the point.”

“Look, if I’d known they were Nazis--“

“ _What!?_ ”

“Yeah, Nazis. I mean I don’t really follow politics but if the rest of them are like these guys--“

“You sold out my friend to the fucking _Nazis_?”

“I didn’t know! I thought they were in the Klan, actually. I mean, they wore these hoods. Pointy hoods, except they were purple. But then I saw they were speaking German and I figured it out for myself. But it was too late, I’d already agreed. And they told me what happens to people that --that  ‘fail them.’”

“I don’t give a crap what happens to you, jackass. I just got one question: do you really have a kid?”

“I--yes. She’s with her mom, they moved to Jersey a year ago. I never told my pops my wife left me. He’s old country, wouldn’t understand.”

“Good. Now, you listen to me, you little bastard: you’re going to bring me to them.”

“I can’t. I can’t go back to those people. Why do you think I’m hiding? You think I’m hiding from you? They had no plans to pay me. And when they find me--“

“You got two choices, pal,” Bucky said, shaking him by his coat again. “First choice is you refuse to help me and I kill you right now. Second choice is you take me to these Nazi bastards and maybe I kill them before they kill you.”

Bucky dropped him on the ground and Stein cried out when he fell a little too hard on the concrete, knocking the back of his head.

“Choose,” Bucky growled between his teeth.

#

Bucky felt like he was in one of those detective comics as he sat above the alleyway, perched and hidden in a fire escape. He could hear the family in the apartment inside listening to Gasoline Alley, Skeezix bantering with Nina Clock. He tried not to get pulled into the story as he watched the alley. The two men guarding the back door to the shop inside hadn’t seen him, and as long as Bucky stayed where he was, they wouldn’t.

It was ten o’clock on the dot, and Stein showed up around the corner, approaching the two of them. Bucky nodded to himself. If there was one thing he could be sure of, is that fellas like Stein who were scared shitless did exactly what they were told, just as you told it to them. And Stein was scared of everything.

Bucky checked the window, made sure the family inside wasn’t looking, then he climbed down the escape ladder.

“I need--,” Stein began, before he was choked off by his fear. “I want to talk to the Baron.”

One of them said something to the other in German. Stein’s face was a twist of fear knotted up with his annoyance of people speaking another language he couldn’t speak. Bucky was close, climbing down the near the door, and he could hear them just fine. If what he remembered from school was accurate, they were talking about where to dump Stein’s body so this Baron wouldn’t be bothered by him.

“Hey, speak English why don’t ya?” Stein said. The tremor in his voice guaranteed the threat didn’t land.

“My English is fine,” said one of them. “You wanna see the Baron? He’s very picky about colloquialisms. I would watch your inflections and abbreviations, pal.”

The German guard had switched to an accent that was perfectly Brooklyn. Bucky would have mingled with him at a Dodgers game and had no idea.

The two of them said they’d let the Baron have his fun with Stein as they opened the door for him.

That was when Bucky dropped from the fire escape behind the door. Stein went inside and the guards did, too. Then he grabbed the side of the door and yanked it back open.

“Are you guys open?” Bucky said. His face was open and earnest. He let his expression tinge with desperation, his eyes flitting between the three of them, searching and a little lost.

“Where they hell did you come from?” said the guard who hadn’t spoken before, but with just as good an American accent as the other guy. He sounded like the kids he’d known in Iowa more than a Brooklyn kid, but it was convincing just the same.

“I’m sorry, it’s just, everywhere’s closed and it’s my baby sister’s birthday,” Bucky began to ramble. “Do you guys have maybe a teddy bear? Or just candy, I can just get some candy and put it in a basket.”

Bucky stepped inside, the ever-curious and pushy customer. One of them grabbed his arm to shove him back out.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is this the back?” Bucky said.

That was long enough to check out the layout. There wasn’t any more guards waiting by the door and the back hallway. So Bucky grabbed the hand holding his arm and twisted it before he kicked him in the diaphragm and into the wall. The other guard he punched in the throat and then hard in the head. Another few blows each and they were both on the ground. They hadn’t gotten the chance to yell for help.

“Good god man, what’d you have to do that for?” Stein said. “They’re gonna kill me for sure.”

“Get out of here,” Bucky said.

“Wait. Wait, you need me.”

“You had better hope I don’t have to come lookin’ for you again. Because if this ain’t the place, I’m not gonna be too merciful.”

“You should know --”

“ _What_?” Bucky said, with an impatience that bit.

“These guys they had a guy when I was here last.”

“What guy?”

“A prisoner or something. He seemed really out of it and it didn’t look --anyway, I hope it’s not too late for your friend, I really do.”

“Get. Gone,” Bucky said.

He didn’t even wait to watch Stein run away as he marched into the building.

#

It sounded like one of those Universal monster movies the further inside he got, all crackling electricity and whirring motors.   He heard people speaking German, but he couldn’t make out more than a few words at a time. He heard just a couple of guys talking, had the idea that he could sneak up on them all--

There was a huge, empty chamber behind a pair of double-doors. Dull, golden light came from behind the part in a thick, purple curtain.

Then he peeked behind a fabric that separated him from the voices.

There were ten of them, he counted, all in a circle ringed by the curtain, with another three in the middle. Two of them were talking, but that’s when Bucky realized it wasn’t a conversation.

They all wore the same hood, and it was long and pointed like a Klan mask, just like Stein had said. Except they had dyed their robes and hoods a deep, royal purple.

Of the three in the center, only one of them looked different. His hood was not pointed, but it was looser and fell around his face like a baggy sack. He wore a gold, pronged ringlet on his head, like a crown.

One of the men addressed him as Baron Zemo, and then asked if the conduit was ready.

The conduit.

Steve. He already knew it was Steve they meant but they stepped aside.

Steve was barely on his feet. He was walking on his own, but his feet didn’t so much step forward as they slid along, bringing him further into the circle. He was doing what they said, walking into the space, but they still shoved him forward. He stumbled and came to a jerking halt amongst them.

Bucky had always heard the phrase “boiling blood” but he hadn’t understand it completely, not until then. He’d been pissed before, but he had never felt like this. He could practically hear the whistle of steam, like it was going to come out of his ears.

But no matter how much he’d like to just dive in and take them on, one by one, he stopped himself.

_Think, moron_ , Bucky thought. _There’s one of you and you’re getting out of here with Steve. Think. Think._

He made himself stop, to not do anything. His legs were trembling with the effort to just stay where he was. He had to wait. He had to know what the hell was going on.

Steve looked up at the man they’d called Zemo.

“I ain’t doin’ it,” Steve said.

By the tone of his voice, it sounded like he’d said it a million times before.

“We asked you permission before because it would have made things easier,” Zemo said. “We no longer require permission.”

He gestured and the two men next to him grabbed Steve by the shoulders and shoved him down onto his knees. Steve hissed in pain as his kneecaps hit concrete, but he brought himself back up, still kneeling, but with his chest out and glaring right at Zemo.

“You son of a bitch,” Bucky whispered to himself.

He was done with watching. He had to move. He pulled away from the purple curtain and silently slid back and away, tried to figure out where exactly he was.

He looked at the ground, saw the drains, then up at the ceiling, and saw the metal. It used to be a slaughterhouse, small business, not one of those huge factories, the Updike nightmare places. It was shut and there weren’t even hooks or machinery left.

If the hooks were gone, the refrigeration units not even on as the heat from outside made the room sweat, then nobody was going to find anything left of him if he messed up. Not in a room full of drains that no one came into anymore.

Then he wondered where they were getting their electricity from. He heard the hum of machines, and the circle was lit by an overhead fluorescent, but that wasn’t coming off the grid. He glanced up at the light, saw it dim and then come back. Then he knew.

He took one last glance at the situation, but then crept away. He found the generator on the far wall. He shut off the switch and then grabbed his pocket knife and cut every plastic tube and wire he could find. They were already shouting, and some of them were running right towards the generator. Bucky slipped into a corner full of shadows. Seven of them had left the circle to investigate. While they were occupied he wasted no time in running back to the purple curtains.

He pulled them aside to see ritual candles still lighting up whatever was happening. He couldn’t see Steve, because the five that were left had come in close around him. Five. Five was better than thirteen. But Bucky still heard Steve. He sounded like he was choking and Bucky thought immediately: _They’re killing him_.

Bucky crept up close, grabbed two of them by the back of the head before bashing their skulls together. The next he gave a punch to the face with his best right hook. He was about to turn and get another one of them.

Everything stopped.

Steve was floating off the ground, the tips of his feet about a food off the ground. He was still making a sound like he was being choked, but nobody was touching him. In fact, the two that were left, and Zemo, had moved back and away from Bucky as they watched him react to what he was seeing.

Steve’s head had been bowed, but his head tilted back, as though he were a marionette and somebody had lifted the string for his head.

Steve’s eyes were bluer than they’d ever been. They were almost white, ringed with deeper blue, and his pupils were pinpricks.

“Steve?” Bucky whispered.

Whatever had lifted a finger to its lips and gave a gentle shush was not Steve. Where Bucky’s blood had boiled only seconds before, ice water ran through him.

“If you interfere with the ritual--,” Zemo said in thickly-accented English.

Bucky didn’t give him a chance. He reached into the inside of his jacket to pull out a pistol and point it at Zemo.

Besides the coffee, it had probably been the best perk about enlisting.

“I’m here to get my friend back,” Bucky said. “You wanna try and stop me? If you try and call for your goons, I’ll shoot you. If you try to stop us from running, I’ll shoot you.”

Whatever had a hold of Steve rolled his head around, looking like he’d almost snap Steve’s neck in order to look at Zemo. Bucky grimaced and shivered, like he’d been touched with something wet and slimy.

Zemo made a step forward. Bucky pulled the trigger.

Bucky’d never fired a gun indoors before. He’d braced for it, but still wasn’t prepared for the ring of the echo off the concrete. The slaughterhouse was smaller than it had seemed in the dim light. It made the bones in his skull feel like a stack of fine china rattling in a house next to a rail line.   Zemo staggered back, grabbed at his chest.

Bucky snatched Steve out of the air like it was all some kind of sick carnival game and managed to get him out of the circle, ducking behind a small part in the curtain into the blackness of the slaughter floor. Steve had gone from light and floating to a limp heaviness as they broke away. Bucky had him on his feet, grabbing his upper arm.

“Steve, come on,” Bucky said and tugged him. “ _Come on_.”

They burst into the alley. It was getting dark, the streetlights coming on.

“Bucky,” Steve said, and it was definitely him. “Wait, Bucky--“

“ _Come on_ ,” Bucky pleaded.

He didn’t let Steve stop until they’d found a taxi and slumped down into the seat. He’d seen it from down the block, bright yellow and checkered, the engine not even on. But he’d seen the shape of a man in the front seat.

“Hey, light’s not on,” said the driver, barely glancing up from his paper. “Find another one.”

“I’m sorry about this,” Bucky said, pulling out his pistol and making sure he could see it in the mirror. “I ain’t gonna take your money, just drive.”

The taxi driver looked into his rear-view, saw the gun, that it was real, and his eyes went wide. Then he sighed, threw the paper on the passenger’s side, turned on the engine and put the car into gear.

Bucky watched behind them as they pulled away from the curb and turned the corner. Nobody had come out of the alley. He turned forward, caught the guy looking in his rearview.

“Thank you,” Bucky said in a sigh as he tried to catch his breath.

“Funny thing,” the driver quipped.

“What?”

“Thanking the guy for doing something in order to not get shot.”

“Fair enough. Steve. Hey, Steve--“

He heard the shallow wetness in Steve’s breath, saw the way he was lying his hand on his chest. Steve’s face was grimaced, his eyes clamped shut, teeth bare.

“What took you so long?” Steve said, not even having to open his eyes to know Bucky was looking at him.

“Well you know my whole life doesn’t revolve around you, you know,” Bucky said.

Bucky dug inside of his jacket pocket and found a familiar tin. He pulled out two white pills, folded them into Steve’s hands.

Steve had a hard time swallowing pills, and it was no better when he was having the attack the pills were supposed to keep from happening.

“Your friend got asthma?” the driver asked.

“Can you take us out of Brooklyn?” Bucky asked.

“You’re the boss. You know, my little girl has that. It’s a tough thing.”

Bucky looked up, caught the driver’s eyes.

“Yeah, it is,” Bucky agreed.

“You hear of these nebulizers they’re working on? You can put  ‘em in your pocket. Can’t wait to live in the future, you know? Even that Stark fellow is talking about flying cars these days, but how about that? A whole nebulizer in your pocket. Sure would save my Lily a lot of grief. You oughta look into it for your friend.”

Bucky nodded, his forehead knotted in confusion. The cabbie had given him a hard time about the gun, but not very much--now they were talking like neighbors. But they were still in Brooklyn, so Bucky figured they kind of were.

“You know,” the cabbie started again. “I don’t live too far from here. We got one of those nice machines, it’s lasted us a few years.”

Bucky was holding on to Steve’s shoulders. He didn’t know how bad it was gonna be. He didn’t even know what they had done to Steve yet. He just saw that Steve was in pain, and was starting to curl in.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Bucky said. “You got a little girl, you said.”

“What are they gonna do, follow every cab driver in the borough home?” the cabbie replied. “Your friend is in bad shape. My wife won’t mind. She likes company.”

“I’ll be okay,” Steve said. Bucky winced. That’s how he knew it was the worst it had been in a while.

“We’d be grateful,” Bucky said.

The cab driver turned on his blinker and changed directions.

#

The wife didn’t seem like she liked company near as much as the cabbie said she did.

Her name was Theresa, and her hair was curly black with silver strands of grey that caught the light. Her Italian accent was still there, but it was something Bucky only noticed every few sentences.

She was kind to them, as kind as she could be considering they were strangers, uninvited, and it was late, but the way she glared at her husband said a lot. Bucky knew she had no idea he’d pulled a gun on her husband, otherwise she wouldn’t be anywhere near as pleasant.

Steve was hooked up to a tank that gave him medicine through a mask, and from the droopy look in his eyes he was feeling a bit better. He still looked like hell, but he could see his smile under the mask, and the way his eyes were narrower and brighter as he played clapping games with Lily, since they didn’t have to talk while they played.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Bucky said over his hot cup of hot chocolate, which was a balm despite the clammy heat outside. “And sorry about how we had to meet.”

“I can spot the ones who are just out for the cash,” said Ernie. “And you kids seem like you’re in a bit of hot water.”

“Yeah. Yeah we are, a little.”

“You got someplace you can lay low? We got a spare room, if--“

“We can’t. I’m sorry, I’m not going to do that. I know you mean well, but these people, I have no idea how hard they’ll come down.”

“It’s not a mob thing, is it? They got special police can help with that kind of thing.”

“No. This is gonna sound insane, but--they were Nazis. Not like the Nazis that walk around actin’ like tough guys, harassing people, but the real ones.”

“You gotta be pulling my leg. Like the Germans, what’s going on over there in Europe? No offence, but what are a couple of Brooklyn kids doing mixed up in that business? I can’t think of a single reason the Germans would wanna come to Brooklyn.”

Bucky moved his fingers over the mug in a nervous tittering as he glanced over at Steve. They had called him a conduit. The things he could do now, what he’d seen him do, what Bucky had seen happen around him in the past couple of days--

“I don’t know yet,” he said.

#

“I’m fine, really.”

Steve pulled his arm away when Bucky grabbed at his worn and dirty shirt. Bucky tugged at him harder and Steve stumbled after him.

“We don’t know when either of us is gonna get another chance to have a decent bath. Come on.”

Bucky shoved him into the bathroom and Steve was rolling his eyes, but his face went from mildly annoyed to wide-eyed surprise when Bucky closed the door with both of them in the bathroom.

“Take off your clothes,” Bucky said, gesturing to Steve.

“Why?” Steve asked.

“I need to check you out.”

“I’m fine, Bucky. Leave me alone. I know how to take a bath.”

“Off.”

Steve leveled his eyes at Bucky, who didn’t change his expression except to raise his eyebrows when Steve just stood there. Steve sighed, his shoulders dropping and he started to strip off his shirt. Bucky checked the bathwater that Theresa had run for them, and it wasn’t too cold.

Bucky felt his blood boiling just under the skin again when he started to see the marks. He wasn’t going to let it show what it was doing to him, especially with the way Steve wouldn’t quite raise his chin.

“Does this hurt?” Bucky asked when he pressed against the bruises on his belly.

“Not so much anymore,” Steve said through a grunt that said he wasn’t admitting that it was bad.

“You’re not going soft on me, are ya?”

“Not a chance.”

Bucky made the hand motion for turning around and Steve’s wry smile turned to nervousness in a snap.

“They, uh--they put something on my back. It felt weird. It still feels weird. I haven’t looked yet.”

Bucky just nodded and Steve turned around. His eyes went wide. He thought he would stop breathing at the sight.

“Get in the tub,” he said.

Steve’s shoulders hunched and tensed and he turned to look at Bucky.

Bucky couldn’t feel his face, and he paid for it in the openness of the fear in his eyes. He scrambled, tried to get Steve out of the rest of his clothes.

“What the hell is it?” Steve asked, his hands trying to calm Bucky's.

Bucky had steered Steve to the edge of the tub, was ready to push him in it--and then he remembered the chill over his skin, and sitting in a pool of water as he held Steve’s lifeless body.

His voice cracked as he tried to say something, anything.

He put his face in his hand. He shook his head, like the refusal in that gesture would command the sick feeling in his gut and the burning behind his eyes go away.

Steve pulled Bucky’s hand away from his face. Bucky stared at eyes as big and blue as they were when he'd first seen Steve. The kid who was looking at the world without a scrap of the cynic, despite the fact that his face was scraped from being dragged on the alleyway concrete.

“It’s just writing,” Bucky said. “You feel funny because you’re allergic or something. The ink, or whatever’s in the ink. It just--it looks creepy, I don’t know. I needed to get it off you.”

“Does it say anything?” Steve asked. “The writing?”

From the tone, Bucky knew it was the only question because it was the necessary one, and it had to be gotten out of the way.

“It’s just gibberish. Weird gibberish. Nonsense. I don’t know why I panicked but--Jesus Christ, Steve, how much more of this shit is out there? Five days ago I was worried about enlistment lines and drafts and bullets and politics and now--ghosts? Cults? Weirdos in purple robes that talk about conduits? And who the hell is Baron Zemo? What are we doing? We don’t know what we’re doing.”

He pressed his thumb into his eye, refused to let the tear get far. Steve reached up, put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky wouldn't let himself look away, like he was desperate to.

That night alone, he’d seen Steve struggle to breathe through his worst attack in years; the sorry, beaten state he was in; he’d seen that he was stumbling and dragging his feet. But he was strong. It was there, in the eyes, he was strong, and Bucky had done all he could to be that strong but he didn’t feel he’d done it. After barely being broken out of capture where he endured god knows what, almost being taken over by who knows what, there was Steve, letting Bucky know it was going to be alright. Bucky allowed his face to break into sadness, because he knew Steve would chalk it up to him being tired, and glad, and upset at their situation, all at once.

Steve reached into the pile of the clothes, gave Bucky a pen and his moleskine, and opened it to a new page.

“I need you to draw it,” Steve said. “Don’t worry about making it pretty, we just got to write it down.”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispered. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Steve turned around and stood still for Bucky, Bucky’s eyes wandered over the slope and jutting bones of Steve’s back to draw the pattern. He was doing as he was told, but after a minute of drawing he could not stop himself. Bucky was reaching for Steve, his fingers almost touching his back.

_I love him_ , Bucky thought.

He said every word in his head with clear intention. He couldn’t help adoring the face which Bucky only saw in profile, as Steve patiently looked at a fixed spot.

It wasn’t a passing thought. It was a statement. He knew it was true, by the way he intended to say those words to himself. He was in love with Steve, and it was irreversible, and it was the truth. He hated himself for how it wasn’t new. It had always been true. He loved Steve.

He pulled his hand back and laid it on the page with his terrible, but accurate, transcription of the symbol.

He loved Steve.

He’d never felt so low.


	5. Chapter 5

They slept through the night without disturbance, but they were woken up before daybreak. Theresa had packed them a breakfast and lunch, like she was sending them off to school. Bucky held out his hand for Ernie to shake, but he grabbed Bucky’s hand and pulled him into a solid embrace. He did the same to Steve.

“You kids stay out of trouble, you hear?” Ernie called after them as they descended the stairs.

“We will,” Steve said, turning around at the bottom.

They waved and headed down the street. Everything they owned was in their pockets or in their hands. Some of Steve’s clothes were new and borrowed, so too big by far, but it was better than looking like he’d just crawled out of whatever hole he had been kept in. Bucky had five bucks in his wallet, a picture ID, and keys to an apartment they couldn’t go back to.

When they were out of earshot, Steve looked to Bucky.

“You had a plan as to what we do now, right?” Steve asked.

“We were gonna lie low,” Bucky said. “But we’re getting out of Brooklyn first. Get as far out as we can, find a hotel, figure it out.”

“That’s as far as you got?”

“Yeah, well there’s something we gotta do, first.”

“What’s that?”

“First, you need to tell me if you know why they took you. That’s a lot of trouble for someone who just busted out of Bellevue for hearing things.”

“Yeah.”

“Steve, I-- I looked at your sketchbook.”

Steve’s face twisted, and Bucky for once didn’t give a shit how wounded Steve looked.

“You gonna tell me what the hell was all that shit you drew?” Bucky asked.

Steve fixed his hair, a nervous gesture that always gave him time to think.

“What I'm being told,” Steve confessed with a sigh, pulling his shoulders up.

Bucky turned towards him, put his hand on his shoulder to stop Steve from walking.

“Look at me,” Bucky said.

Steve looked right at him, defiant, head cocked.

“I know what you’re going to say, Buck, and--“

“This isn’t a joke anymore. This isn’t something that’s weird but harmless, and honestly, I don’t even know why I thought that in the first place. People came after you. If I hadn’t stumbled onto something, I’d never have found you. I don’t know what you think is going to change between us because you’re just worried about what I’ll think, but you know me. You know me. I’m not gonna stop being your friend. You tell me what’s going on with you.”

Steve let his eyes close, worried his brow until it wrinkled like an old man’s.

“Okay,” Steve said with a nod. “Not here. Let’s get to a train. Like you said, we gotta get out of New York City.”

#

They got to Penn Station just in time to get a ticket and board the train to Ithaca. When Steve asked why Ithaca, Bucky said he chose it at random. It was safest that way. They found a seat at the back of a nearly-empty car and plopped down into the seats. Steve wouldn’t turn away from the window. He was letting his mind rest.

Travel was like that sometimes. It was nice to just look out a window, especially when a lot of the world was going by outside. Bucky laid back on the seat, sinking into the cushions . He turned his head and let himself stare at Steve. Bucky was studying his face the way Steve was looking out the window: like it was something to do to get peace of mind.

As they left Penn Station behind, the train still slow within the city, Steve turned to Bucky. Bucky didn’t glance away, and Steve didn’t seem startled that Bucky was staring at him. Steve glanced down at his shoes like a kid who was just learning what shame was.

“Somebody’s been talking to me,” Steve said at last.

“Anybody I know?” Bucky asked.

“Do you know anyone who’s not human?”

Bucky blinked as his expression wasn’t sure what to do.

“I can’t say I do,” Bucky said.

“I think it doesn’t want us to be on this train.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“How?”

Steve sighed, closed his eyes. There was a silence that stretched, and Bucky was prepared to let it stretch for as long as it would take.

“I thought it was just daydreams at first,” Steve said. “I was having these whole conversations in my head. It’s like you do when you picture yourself discussing something with somebody, except this wasn’t someone I knew, or had read about. It was just there, all the time, this _thing_. I just used it to work things out in my head, you know? Like, when you pretend to have a conversation and then you get an answer. But you still know it was you that figured it out. Thinking about talking it out with someone didn’t mean it came from them. But I can’t know the things this thing knows.”

“What kind of things?”

“Words in a language I ain’t heard of. Then--I don’t know what to call them. Spells? It gave me the shield when the ghosts got really bad. It did it because I was scared. It showed me that symbol, it told me what to do. I never found it in any book. It must not be bad if it just wants to protect me, right? But I still don’t know.”

“So you’re still talking to it.”

“It’s not exactly talking.”

“And now you’re telling me that Nazis want the stuff that’s in your head? The stuff you conveniently wrote down in this.”

Bucky knocked on the moleskine through Steve’s jacket.

“They can’t read the writing,” Steve said.

“Because you wrote it in code,” Bucky said.

“Yeah. And they don’t have the key.”

“They’re breaking keys all the time now that there’s a _war on_.”

“They can’t read it.”

“So is that it? You got anything else to let me know? You been seeing pixies or little green men?”

“Dead soldiers are asking for my help.”

Bucky put his face in his palm.

“Steve. Steve. _Steve_.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not now, but you’re gonna be. Okay, we can work this out. You got somethin’ talking to you, helping you or messing with you, we don’t know yet. And the dead soldiers, why do they need your help? They ought to be in Europe. Or heaven. Probably Europe, I don’t know.”

“They just plead for my help. And I can’t help them. I don’t know what they’re asking, or where they are.”

“We should get that spirit board thing, they used them all the time back in the day. You know, the Conan Doyle types. I wonder if they have your local palm-reader and that sort of thing in Ithaca. We can probably--“

“Shhh.”

“What the hell are you shushing me for?”

“Bucky, shut up.”

Bucky heard the sound of the door at the front of the car opening and it was someone heading to the bathroom. A man riding alone was chatting to the older couple at the front of the train about their trip upstate.

Steve tilted his head, turning his ear like an antenna. But whatever he was tuning into, it wasn’t sound. He blinked.

“Bucky!” Steve shouted, and he jumped up.

Bucky saw the gun just in time to grab the valet’s hand. Gunshots echoed as the would-be assassin squeezed the trigger. It missed them and blew a hole in the ugly carpet. Steve put his hands over his ears, but it would be too late. Bucky heard his own ears ringing bad enough that his skull vibrated.

Bucky’s ears were keen enough to catch the screaming. The couple at the front of the car got out, the old man putting his wife in front of him, and the passengers in the cars around them were shouting after the sound of a gunshot. By the time Bucky wrestled the valet to the ground Steve was running over and stomped on the man’s wrist. He picked up the gun, a huge, smoking silver magnum. Bucky hit the guy twice, and then again, and again, even after he was limp.

“Bucky!” he heard Steve’s voice again and it cut through the fear.

He hadn’t realized how unnecessary it was, not through the haze of ringing ears and anger. Bucky looked at Steve, then down at the valet.

“Come on, there might be more of them,” Bucky said, and opened the door to the next car back.

“There are too many people that way,” Steve protested.

“Well we can’t go forward and we can’t stay put,” Bucky said, pulling his pistol out of his jacket. “Don’t fire that thing, Steve. The kick-back’ll take you to the moon.”

Steve looked down at the gun in his hand. Steve’s hands had always been always big, but the magnum still looked too massive for him.  Bucky grabbed  it  out  of  Steve’s  hand  and  tucked  it  into  his  jacket  pocket,  ignoring  Steve’s  protests.

The passengers in the car recoiled at the sight of the pair, but Bucky ignored them and started scanning for a place they could lay low and hide for a little while, until they stopped the train. Then he heard the commotion of someone coming, the shouts of people seeing something that startled them. He grabbed Steve’s collar and shoved him down between the seat and seatback with no one sitting there.

“Halt!”

The man who had shouted was wearing a security uniform. Bucky knew the uniform was fake. It was too new and shiny, the kind of pressed you only get from something right out of the wrapping when you order it. He was stepping closer and closer, moving towards Bucky with even, careful strides that said military. The passengers escaped out the back of the car, filing out as soon as the guard got closer to Bucky.

_That’s right, look at me,_ Bucky thought. _Look just at me. Come here, punk. See how you do against someone your own size._

“Where is he?” the guard asked.

“I don’t know who you mean,” Bucky said with a shrug.

The security guard narrowed his eyes, tilted his head.

“I know who you are, James Buchannan Barnes. do you think you are, in comparison to us? What do you think you stand in front of? Evil? Do you think us agents of evil? Why don’t you come with me? I can show you.”

The security guard pulled his gun from his belt. He did not point it.

“You know what I think?” Bucky said. “I think the guy in front of me is trying to kill my friend. I don’t give a shit about your Superman radio show evil plans, pal. So you walk away and you live to see another day of being a shit-eating Nazi.”

“Fine. Go ahead. Have your narrow American view, you small-minded nothing of a man.”

The guard’s mouth flinched up, and he took several strides forward, to match Bucky stepping back. He raised his gun sights. Bucky felt everything align right. He wasn’t checking the seats, he wouldn’t see Steve.

That was ruined when Steve dived out from between the seats, smacking the security guard on the head with a solid, heavy briefcase someone had left behind.

_Damn it_ , Bucky swore to himself while trying not to grin, knowing full well it was the insult that had brought him out to fight.

Bucky dove on to the security guard, who was already fighting to get up. There was a clunk as the magnum dropped out of his pocket.

Steve dived for the gun, and was getting ready to lift it.

“The emergency brake,” Bucky said. “Get to an emergency brake. We’re getting off.”

Steve looked around, saw the handle for the brake in the back corner. He lowered the gun and ran to it.

The guard grabbed Bucky and tried to drag him down with bare fists. Bucky tried to point his gun, but the Nazi was too strong. His hand was slammed against the seat and his pistol went flying.

The guard reeled back and he had a knife. Bucky had no idea where it had come from. He was lifting it above his head, getting ready to stab.

The boom of the magnum shattered the air, and Bucky saw the cushion of a seat explode. When he turned, Steve was back against the wall, holding his own arm. His eyes wide at the aftermath of the recoil.

It was enough of a distraction. Bucky shoved the Nazi hard, and the knife dropped from his hand.

“The brake!” Bucky yelled.

The door to the car behind them opened and Steve froze. He was expecting another assassin, but it was a woman. Her hair was done up for travel and she was wearing a hat pinned to the side and a shawl over her shoulders. Bucky was able to glance up at her as he wrestled away from the Nazi. He froze. It was Gaskill, the woman who had come from Bellevue. It was a moment of distraction too long, and the Nazi landed a punch on his jaw.

“Miss, get back!” Steve yelled.

Her hands had been folded under her purse. She lifted an arm to reveal a derringer. Steve pulled a face as he stared at the barrel. He dived to the side.

The security guard had Bucky on the ground under his knee and had stood to get leverage for another punch.

The woman shot twice and the security guard jerked. There were two bullet holes above his heart, centimeters apart. The light left his eyes and he collapsed.

They both were too stunned to do anything but stare at her. She made a little huff of satisfaction and lowered the pistol.

“Well,” she said, and they heard her English accent. “That’s taken care of. Shall we?”

She reached up, grabbed the emergency brake, and pulled. The train lurched and Steve and Bucky lurched with it, but the woman was like a sailor with good sea-legs in a storm, and barely budged. She waited for the train to come to a complete stop before wrenching the safety mechanism off and opening the door to the outside. After she’d stepped casually down onto the tracks, they saw Jeeps coming up the pathway next to the train, kicking up dry dirt with the tires going as fast as they could be pushed.

“We’re grateful, really,” Steve said, and there was a shine of admiration in his eyes. “But who are you?”

“I’m Agent Carter, and we’re with the Strategic Paranormal Reserve,” she said.

“The what?” Bucky asked.

“I’ll explain on the way. Our ride is here.”

#

They were going back south. Bucky felt all kinds of wrong about that. It wasn’t Agent Carter he didn’t trust, just his own gut. New York had felt like home nearly his whole life, and now it felt like occupied territory.

_We’re going the wrong way_ , was all Bucky could think. He kept picturing Ithaca, the idea of Ithaca. He didn’t even know what the town looked like. He knew there was a school, and it was kind of well-off, but it was away from the city. It felt safe. Most importantly, it was a long way away.

But this agent, the way Steve looked at her--that was a gauge he trusted better than his own. The only reason Steve’s instincts weren’t to be trusted were when he was trying his damndest to think the best of people he’d just met. People like Gary Stein.

They were going into Battery Park. They went past South Street and Bucky caught a glimpse of the bridge as he looked past the fish market. Then they slipped into an alleyway.

A garage was open and the two Jeeps pulled in, and the drivers waited for the door to close behind them. And then another set of doors opened inside, doors that just looked like concrete walls until they slid aside. The Jeeps pulled into the building proper and they saw the base of operations.

Agent Carter led the two of them through. They passed by cabinets filled with specimen jars, and tables where he would guess they’d work with all those samples. Bucky stored away the hope he’d get to look at a few of the things that had caught his eye, but his main instinct was to stay as close as possible to Steve.

Not a lot of people were there. The occasional, very relaxed MP, but no soldiers or scientists.

“I normally would not expose you to something like this immediately, but we don’t have much time,” Agent Carter said.

They passed through a pair of stainless steel doors to find, of all things, a morgue. It was empty of everything but equipment and the two men standing in the middle of the room. Their heads shot up when they heard the door open.

“Hello, love,” said one of them, tall and English with a thin moustache. “Is it about that time?”

“Who are these guys?” said the other, a tall, broad-chested black man leaning on the edge of a stainless steel table reading a magazine that seemed to be in French.

“Steve Rogers,” Steve said immediately, holding his hand out to shake their hand.

Both of them looked warily at him, and shook his hand anyway. Bucky smirked to himself.

“You can call me Bucky,” he said, and followed suit.

“Montgomery Falsworth,” said the Englishman. “And you can call me Monty.”

“Gabe Jones,” said the other.

“I’m afraid we have to cut the pleasantries short,” Carter said. “He’s very fresh and it’s easier this way.”

The doors behind them opened again, and a gurney slid inside. Bucky realized with a start that the arm that was peeking out under the blanket was covered in the fabric of a newly pressed security uniform. The body was rolled to Monty, who folded back the blanket. He wondered if Falsworth was a mortician.

Bucky looked over to Steve. He could tell he was uncomfortable. This was one of the men who had tried to kill him, and now he was there, harmless, but still horrible to look at.

“How long since he died?” Monty asked.

“Less than a half an hour,” she said.

“Good. This is a nice break from the usual.”

“I don’t understand,” Steve cut in. “What’s happening?”

“We’re going to wake the dead,” Monty said, as casually as if had he announced they were going to go to the market.

Monty put his left palm under the man’s head, and then his right over his forehead. He nodded to Gabe, who picked up the corpse’s wrists and held them together. Monty bowed his head, and then they heard a humming sound. It was almost like machines, but it was deep in the Englishman’s throat. Bucky cocked his head to the side. About half a minute passed in total silence except for the steady hum. Steve’s mouth parted slightly as he leaned close. Bucky was about to pull him away as he noticed Agent Carter leaning back slightly.

Bucky leapt back as the corpse shouted and jerked to life.

“Jesus!” Bucky swore.

Steve had jumped, and his eyes were wide, but he hadn’t moved back. He was frozen, eyes fixed on the formerly dead man struggling against Gabe’s way of restraining him. Then the corpse began to speak, but his German was go guttural and choked off by whatever fluids were in its throat that Bucky couldn’t make it out.

“Well, he’s feisty,” Monty said.

“Anything in particular we need to ask him?” Gabe said to Carter.

“He’ll start talking in a moment,” she said.

The corpse looked around wildly, like a madman in the middle of a fit. And then he sharply turned his head and his eyes, pale and sharp, focused on Steve. It stopped its struggles and let loose a sound. A rattle came from his throat and fluid, pink with spit and blood, fell out of his mouth.

Bucky turned to Steve, whose eyes were locked with the reanimated man’s. Eyes that had the look of a clear glass of water on a day with blue skies. He was going to tell Steve this wasn’t alright, but there was the way Steve stared. He was seeing something nobody else in that room could see. If he broke him away, he wouldn’t be able to handle Steve’s disappointment.

“Ecrah bedch saom va Zazael,” said the corpse.

Bucky felt every muscle in his body seize up.

“What did he say?” Carter asked.

“Don’t hold me to it, this language family is still a bit tricky for me,” Gabe said. “More or less, he said  ‘you belong to the one named’ and then I think the name is  ‘Zazael.’”

“Who is Zazael?” Steve asked.

He’d asked the corpse. Didn’t just ask, demanded an answer, his voice low and heavy with authority.

The corpse’s eyes moved to Bucky. The ghoul had eyes that had gone red, and a nasty fluid had leaked out of them. But it was more than that which made Bucky flinch.

“Does somebody want to fill us in?” Bucky asked.

“I haven’t got him for much longer,” Monty said. “If I force it, he’ll be a ghoul.”

Agent Carter leaned in and Steve jumped and walked back as she came between his eyeline with the corpse. She put her face right next to the dead man’s face as he gritted his teeth and the pinkish foam was forced between them.

“Is Zazael the name of the leader of the Empire?” she asked.

It laughed. Monty changed the way his hands were holding it and it convulsed once, like it was shocked.

“He’s going,” Monty announced.

“Ze--Zeeeemoooo,” it rattled off and then went limp.

It was over and Bucky exhaled like he’d just finished at the gym, pushing his hair back and letting his shoulders drop.

“That’s it,” Monty said and he and Gabe released it.

The man Agent Carter had killed had only been shot in the chest. It had not deformed him to die, but whatever had happened to him after he’d come back had left him twisted, his fingers stiff and contorted, the whites of his eyes a deep pink, and his face stuck in a sneer that wouldn’t melt away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have read this before, yes I did change a lot of this chapter. It needed a lot of cleaning up. Yikes!


	6. Chapter 6

Carter had asked to speak with Bucky alone. Before he was escorted away, he tried to get Steve's attention. Steve, who wouldn’t look at anything but his shoes. All Bucky wanted was to see if he was okay, but he couldn’t get Steve to answer. He was led away, telling Steve that he’d be right back. He didn’t know if Steve had heard him.

It was an interrogation room. He began to wonder what the tactic was, if maybe they were in even hotter water than they were before, but when Carter folded her hands in front of her and looked at him with level, open eyes, he started.

He’d expected more hardness from her, but instead--looking at a pleasant face was a respite after the train. He let it be a balm. He didn’t think it was a trick, not even some suspicious, small part of his brain.

“I know you wanted to stay with your friend, but I needed to speak with you alone,” she said.

“I don’t want him to be alone right now,” Bucky said.

“I know, neither do I. But there is something we need to address.”

Peggy had a file in front of her and she opened it. The front was blank, but it was full of paper.

“You were supposed to report for duty this morning, sergeant. You were also supposed to report that you had been charged with breaking and entering to a superior officer.”

“I’ve been a little busy.”

“I went ahead and pulled some strings. This won’t come up in your service record. Officially, you were meant to report to me. You informed me of the incident as well, and since the police could not press charges, I felt no disciplinary action was needed.”

“Thanks.”

“I am also in charge of your reassignment.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes, and her face was pleasant but closed off. He couldn’t read her.

“You just expect me to ship off? Ma’am, I have had a hell of a week. You don’t know the half of it. And I’m sure as hell not going to leave him, not now that I know the things I know.”

“You misunderstand,” Carter said. “You are being reassigned to us. We have various specialists in various different fields, but all of them are trained army officers. Your friend is an asset we sorely need, but in the places we’re going, I believe a little extra help is in order.”

“I’m tired. I’m really, really tired. Please, just lay it out. Plain English.”

“If Steve Rogers agrees to be a part of the Strategic Paranormal Reserve, he will be a sergeant in the military. He will be expected to go to areas of conflict. He will need protection. We’ve gotten so caught up in our own purpose we forgot we were fighting a war where there are occasionally guns and bombs. I, and the rest of my team, are trained to meet that kind of combat, but your friend is not.”

“What are you asking me?”

“I’m asking you to be his shield when he gets out there.”

“Yes.”

She looked like she was ready to explain more, but she paused, lips pursed in the word she was about to speak.

“I--just like that?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, wondering why it wasn’t obvious.

Her confusion had only lasted for a moment. Then it melted, like chocolate in the sun, into a smile.

“He must be very important to you,” Peggy said through the glow on her face.

“You got no idea,” Bucky said, smiling back.

“That’s what I like to hear. I once worked for a man who warned me that I was too emotional. Very typical. He said, with the numbers that are coming out of Europe, I should think of my men like the paper dolls he assumed I had, bound to be used up, and then replaced. But the things is, I am emotional. That should not be a criticism. It has saved me more than once. And netted me a husband.”

“Falsworth?”

“Jones.”

“Huh. Congratulations.”

“Thank you. What I mean by telling you this anecdote is this: I would rather go into danger with someone I cared about and risk more, than assuming none of the people I was fighting beside gave a damn about me. I was sent to retrieve Rogers, make sure he stayed unharmed. When I saw what you’d done to do the same thing--I’m glad he came to you first, is what I’m saying.”

He was still going to war after all. He wasn’t upset, not really. That Steve would be going over there, in whatever way--he stopped himself thinking, raised his chest with a breath. Resolve. He would go, not by himself, but with Steve.  

The recollection of the not-there when Steve was absent threatened to rip apart his ribs. Bucky remembered the way he felt to see him again. He’d never been so happy to lay eyes on someone in his whole life. He’d let Steve drift away before. Never again.

#

“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky said.

He walked slowly into the large office, sauntering over to where Steve was sitting. Steve’s legs were hopping up and down as he sat in an office chair. At the sight of Bucky walking in, Steve stood up.

“We’re going overseas,” Steve said. “They said--I can be in the army, they’re putting us together.”

The mixture of happiness and wonder in Steve’s face had a painful clamp on Bucky’s heart. But he smiled through it.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I’m your bodyguard or something. So nothing’s really changed. We’ll be doing the same thing.  ‘Cept this time the bullies have tanks.”

“I just never really pictured it like this.”

Bucky shrugged. Neither had he, but he didn’t know what kind of Hemingway idea he had about war, not really. He figured he’d just know when he got there, taking as much of what he learned in the camp in Jersey with him.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said, his voice low.

“Yeah?” Bucky said, voice quiet.

“Stein died.”

Bucky felt the sadness radiate out of Steve, and it sobered him some. He knew Steve wasn’t talking about the younger Stein. Steve meant Gerold, he old man who Bucky had never met, but wished he had. He tried to picture Gerold Stein through Steve’s eyes, but he just didn’t know enough. Steve still hadn’t talked about it.

The buzz of the week, and especially the day, quieted. It was a mellowness, a lack of nerves. He sat down and so did Steve. Detecting that Steve wasn’t done telling it all, he waited.

“He, uh--,” Steve said. “I’d seen the shadow man before. I thought he was gone, I thought the voice had given me the right thing to get it out of the hospital. But then then nurses wheeled him out of the ward the next day. He wasn’t sick. He wasn’t suicidal. I know what happened to him. I hadn’t gotten rid of it. So I went looking for the shadow. I thought it might even be at his son’s, but--“

“You gotta stop doin’ this to yourself, kid,” Bucky said. “Not everybody’s your responsibility. Old men die.”

“Something _happened_ ,” Steve insisted.

“Maybe. What are you gonna do about it? Hunt down a shadow while Nazis are hunting you down?”

“I don’t know. I thought if I helped his son, it would make up for not knowing what was about to happen to Gerold.”

Bucky rolled his head back. He had to get it under control, the strain in his heart caused by how incredibly, ridiculously _Steve Rogers_ that was of him.

_I love him_.

“You gotta cut this out,” Bucky said.

“Don’t tell me what to care about,” Steve snapped.

“It’s going to get you killed.”

Steve was quiet. He wanted to struggle against the idea more, but didn’t seem to want to fight Bucky. So Bucky put his arm around Steve’s shoulder, jerked him under it until he was pressed against his ribs. There was a solidity to Steve as he tensed, but then Bucky felt him relax into a familiar embrace.

“I can’t do this without you, Buck,” Steve said. “I shouldn’t have left in the first place. I can’t--I just need you here.”

Bucky already felt himself ruining the moment. But he thought if he could just give this question a chance, he could either have peace of mind, or know to wait.

“You checked into Bellevue in March,” Bucky said. He felt Steve tense. “Where were you in February?”

“Please don’t,” Steve said.

“Sure.”

That was all he had to say. Steve relaxed again, and they sat as they felt the weight of how tired they were keeping them from standing up or even thinking about pulling away from each other.


	7. Chapter 7

**Somewhere on the Russian/Finnish border--July 1943**

Rain pounded the muddy ground in big, wet splats. As the drops knocked against Bucky’s head, it felt like he was being pelted by a petulant child. It was soaking through the bulk of his thick coat and he swore he could feel it leeching into his bones.

The Empire soldier was rolling his head to the side, trying to work out some crick as he rubbed his neck. The walls of the dark alley practically pointed to the tall rectangle of light the guard was silhouetted in.

The rain was loud. The soldier didn’t hear the footsteps and Bucky was able to grab him, his arm around the soldier’s neck, and his other holding his arms so he couldn’t reach any of his spare weapons. Over the minute it took him to lose consciousness, his blows and grabs at Bucky’s arms became weaker, until it was soft pawing, and then his body slumped. The soldier was already sinking into the mud.

Bucky grabbed him under the shoulders and dragged him back into the dark. He was putting him in a dark inset in the wall when he heard a footfall behind him, a squelch in the mud.

“ _< Freeze!>_“

Bucky turned, his fists ready, but the gun barrel was already pointing at him. He raised his arms instead, felt the sure smoothness of the dagger concealed in his sleeve.

“Hey, buddy,” Bucky said.

“<Shut up!>“ the soldier yelled.

Bucky heard the rattle of the gun that said the soldier wasn’t holding it right. He was green, unprepared. Bucky charged and they began to wrestle over the rifle. He put his hand over the trigger so the soldier couldn’t pull it. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let anybody hear a shot. If Bucky was lucky, nobody had heard the shout among the deafening rainfall.

Bucky pulled the dagger out, was going to bring it down.

Bucky thought he had a solid foot on the ground, but underneath the layer of mud there was slick stone and Bucky fell as soon as the German pushed him with a lucky burst of reserved strength. Bucky was on the ground, and the gun barrel was against his forehead.

“ _No_ ,” Bucky thought, cross-eyed from staring up the rifle like it was a pathway. “ _Not now_.”

The soldier’s breath hitched and a jerk went through his whole body. He tried to breathe, but it rattled out through his lungs like he was drowning in the rain. The soldier was turning, trying to see--

When the soldier dropped to the ground, Steve was there. He was standing with his feet firmly planted in the mud, a knife in his hand. The tip was red like it had been dipped in strawberry candy.

Steve took in a breath that shook as he took in the sight of the man on the ground, a man no longer moving.

Then Bucky heard it, more movement nearby. Two guards. There was no time to ask Steve, to make sure of anything. He grabbed the dead man, pulled him to the side. There was a door behind him and he tried it.

Locked. He dropped the body and grabbed Steve’s arm, led him away, behind the corner of the alleyway entrance.

Bucky caught his breath and his bearings before he turned back around to look down the alley. Two soldiers were kneeling beside the bodies. Bucky hit the back of his head against the stone wall in frustration.

When he looked down at Steve, he saw the kid was miles away. Bucky had to tap him on the shoulder so Steve would actually look at him. Bucky didn’t quite know what was in Steve’s eyes, but he knew he’d never seen it there before. Bucky forced down the grimace that threatened to appear on his face. He made a motion of retreat and Steve nodded. They scampered away like mice.

The half-ruined building was on a hilltop, a nineteenth century palace left to rot. Once upon a time, Russian nobles used it as a place to celebrate spring. Even Czar Alexander had stayed there every once in a while. But as a ruin against stormy sky heavy with rain and cloud that made summer feel like autumn, it was something out of gothic movies. Bucky glanced back over his shoulder as they crawled into the safety of the tree line and tried to imagine it as it had been, but it was hard to see through the flag of the Empire draped over the side, a purple banner over a wall riddled with bullet holes.

“Bucky--,” Steve said.

“I heard it,” Bucky replied. The shouts, and Bucky recognized enough of the words echoing downhill as terms for searching and finding.

Bucky hoped his bearings were still good as he came to the edge of the copse of trees. Then there it was, a pointed roof, half-crooked in decay. A church. He waved for Steve to follow him.

They broke into it easily, a rear door already half off its hinges. Rain streamed in through much of the ceiling, but there was a balcony. They found the staircase to it and ran up the stairs, sitting against the balcony wall so no one who came in from below could see them.

The first thing Steve did was to press his forehead against the wall.

“You okay?” Bucky asked, and he hoped his shallow breath didn’t make him sound exasperated.

“I’m not gonna throw up,” Steve said.

“You can throw up.”

“I am in a church,” and then, uncoiling from the wall he glanced at Bucky’s jacket. “Where is it?”

Bucky unbuttoned his peacoat and pulled aside the flap to reach into a pocket and pull out a book. It was only as large as his unfolded hand. He began to hand it to Steve, but stopped.

“Maybe not here,” Bucky said. “We don’t know what’s in it.”

“Please,” Steve said, and that was all it took.

Steve held the book in his hand, hands that were bigger than Bucky’s and made it look even smaller. Steve sighed and the book made his arms bob like a weighed buoy at sea.

“This had better have been worth it,” Steve said.

Bucky didn’t wait for his permission, just grabbed Steve’s shoulder at the base of the neck and yanked on him until he was squeezed against his side. Even with the little annoyed grunt that came out of Steve, Bucky locked him in with that arm, refused to let go. Steve settled into it. Their legs spread messily in front of them, boots half-buried in the debris of a collapsing roof.

Bucky was listening for footsteps, shouts, the clatter of wood being kicked around. He heard nothing but falling water and the rustle of old, stiff paper.

“The Hebrew Gabe’s been teaching me isn’t sticking,” Steve complained.

Bucky glanced down and saw a page of Cyrillic text around charts of Hebrew words in a diagram. It could have been instructions, or just a family tree. This was still new, and Bucky couldn’t read either language. He at least felt useful last time they had done something like this, when his Catholic school Latin had come in handy.

“What’s that one mean?” Bucky asked, pointing to a word.

“I don’t know,” Steve said in a sigh.

“That one?”

“Bucky, stop.”

Steve closed the book, and he covered his whole face with his hand. Bucky closed what little space was left between them when he squeezed him against his body and let Steve hit him on the chest.

“Too bad there’s not a priest,” Steve said. “Confession would be nice.”

“Base has got a chaplain,” Bucky reminded him. “You just gotta wait a spell.”

“But we’re in a church. And it’s been a while.”

“Yeah. I never did it enough, myself. Well, not as much as my folks would have liked.”

“I’ve never killed a man before.”

Bucky pulled back to look Steve in the eye. They were still the big, blue eyes he remembered, all full of light and hope, but it was like he was looking at them through a dark screen. He clamped his hand on Steve’s shoulder, grabbed him until he felt bone under muscle. Steve’s eyes dropped at the feeling of the rough touch, knowing it would make the muscles loose.

“You know I’m not your priest,” Bucky said through a grin.

“Yeah, but what if we don’t make it back to the chaplain?” Steve asked. “Seems a waste. We’re in a church.”

Bucky was about to tell Steve he had nothing to be sorry about. But then he didn’t.

They were in a church.

And then it was real. He’d been in the field for a month with Steve, a month without him. Steve hadn’t been there when he’d killed for the first time. No one had been. He was sent alone, or as alone as he could be within radio contact with Falsworth.

In that moment, he felt a veil turn to nothing.

“This is all my fault, you know,” Bucky said. “If we’re confessing things.”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” Steve said.

“You died.”

He felt Steve go stiff and reel back to look at Bucky. Bucky wouldn’t look at him.

“How many Hail Mary’s do you think I’d have to do for lying about something like that?” Bucky asked.

“I don’t understand,” Steve said.

Bucky could hear the crack in his voice. He didn’t. He really didn’t understand what Bucky meant.

Bucky ran his hand over a face muddy from rain and dirt, leaving streaks in the aftermath of his fingertips. A part of him was running after what was coming out of his mouth to catch it and pull it back, before it got on a train and was out of the station for good.

“You had that fever,” Bucky reminded him. “Then you started seeing things. You ever wonder why? I mean, it wasn’t just you getting sick and then this coming after you. The voice, the ghosts, the Shadow Man. Just  ‘cos you got a little sick?”

“Peggy said this happens sometimes to people with,” Steve reached for the phrase. “Near-death experiences.”

“It wasn’t near. I had you in my arms. You weren’t breathing. Then I--“

“You got me breathing again.”

Bucky’s voice stopped in his throat. It took him a while to get it working again.

“I should never have been at work,” Bucky said, closing his eyes.

“Come on, Buck,” Steve said.

Steve put his hand on Bucky’s arm, gave it a squeeze.

Bucky rolled his shoulder out of his grip and grasped Steve’s forearm, made him look right at him.

“God damn it, Steve, think about yourself for two seconds,” Bucky snapped. “I just said you died and I never told you. I’m saying I was too busy at work to know you had caught that fever. I’m saying I was supposed to help you and I was thinking about food and bills and I should have been there.”

Then a sound from below them, boards being broken. They weren’t even looking for doors, just tore through the windows.

They went into a crouch. Bucky held his rifle across his chest and Steve had removed his sidearm, not yet used in the field. They peeked over the edge of the balcony and saw two soldiers trailing their eyesight through the church with their guns. Bucky ducked back down, started surveying for an exit.

They both jumped when he saw him, the tall old man in black. He had a beard that was wild but a haircut that was controlled, and he waved to them to come. He was holding open a partition, an entrance to a hole in the wall. They had no time to wonder about it and rushed inside. The old man closed the door, a partition made of wooden slats that looked like fallen pieces of roof to hide its true nature.

They sat in the dark alcove surrounded by the things the squatter had hidden away. A small stove, a slim, hay mattress, and many blankets, and a night stand in the corner so stuffed with oddly-placed possessions that it looked like a shrine. They could see each other through the dim light of what was left of the late evening. The soldiers shuffled around, and felt free to shout at each other when they thought there were no places anyone could be hiding.

Then they left and Steve sighed in relief.

“Thank you,” Bucky said.

“Americans?” the man in black asked.

Steve nodded, not sure if that was a wise thing to reveal or not.

“Spies?”

“Not quite,” Bucky said.

“You have so many things to win your fight,” the man said. “Both sides. But I will wait for winter. I have watched these Germans for days now. I would not be here much longer, if I were you.”

“What about you?” Steve asked. “Are you going to be alright?”

The man in black opened the top of his robe. He was pock-marked with deep bullet-holes. They weren’t old and healed, but rather open, and the blood and muscle they could see on the inside was black. He was dead.

_A ghoul_ , Bucky thought with a shudder. The last time he had met one, it was young, newly risen. This man was an older one, had gotten its mind back. But it was still a ghoul. Still dangerous.

Bucky still remembered his first encounter with a ghoul with perfect clarity. Steve was still in London, his education under Carter and Jones not quite complete. But Bucky and the others, Dugan, Dernier, and Falsworth, were looking into an island off the coast of Belfast that a small group of German spies had tried to occupy undetected. Their failure, and their ultimate break, bore the fruit of intelligence. They found an ancient stone circle, embedded into the ground with lines converging in the center. It only took Dernier a second to recognize the ley lines.

They hadn’t any idea that the Empire had resurrected ghouls while they were there. They barely managed to fight off the dead. They didn’t go down under bullet fire, not even when their heads were full of holes. It took fire, and lots of it. Luckily, Dernier had a gift for improvised pyrotechnics.

“They were new ones,” Monty explained as they watched the pile of bodies burn. “Under orders, because they don’t know what else to do at this point. It’s a monstrous thing to do. Pity them. And if you see an older one, pity them, too. Be very kind.”

“I keep secret the things in this place,” the Russian ghoul said.

Bucky snapped back into the present. The ghoul pointed to Steve’s jacket pocket, where the book lay.

“Were you any other men, I would kill you for having that,” the ghoul said. “But it is better than it being found by these others, and I cannot kill them all. And before you ask: it was the revolution. 1912.”

Bucky and Steve left soon after night fell and there was no more light for the Empire to easily search by. They looked back into the doorway of the church, the man in black a floating pale face in the passageway. Steve smiled his thanks and waved to him. The ghoul nodded, smiled. He had probably not been thanked in some time. Bucky nodded his thanks, too.

#

They didn’t find rest until the Finnish border. They came to a camp of a Finnish unit and surrendered, reported they were with the US army, and once everything was verified over Allied communications, they were taken out of holding and given a small hut.

It was out and away from the main barracks. It was small, cozy, but dirty--so, better than any beds they’d had in a month.

“I’ve never been camping before,” Steve said, his lips curving up at the edges when he looked back at Bucky.

“We’re not camping,” Bucky said. “And we’ve been sleeping out of doors for a month, what are you talking about?”

“It’s a cozy little hut in the woods. That’s what rich people do, right? They get little places like this and get away from their nice houses for a while.”

“I have a feeling the Finns just don’t trust us. Why else push us to the edge of the camp?”

He opened the box of supplies the Finnish had given him, made a mental inventory. An army knife to replace his if it was broken, nail clippers, tools to repair his boots, coffee filters, prophylactics, lubricants, bandages, rope, socks, gloves, hats, dried foodstuffs, a small percolator, spare butane, flints and matches. More generous than he could have hoped for.

“I’m gonna get in that shower,” Steve said, beginning to hop out of his boots.

Bucky’s spine was straight as a plank and he turned around and stared with wide eyes.

“There’s a shower?” he whispered.

“Didn’t that Sami guy tell you? We’re on top of a hot springs, so it’s already hot and you don’t have to wait for it to warm, wait, hey! No, I said I was gonna go first, Bucky!”

They fought at the door, Bucky elbowing Steve in the collar and Bucky getting shoved in the ribs before they both squeezed through, only to find a wall of four stalls. Bucky had gotten half out of his clothes but was too impatient and he got under the hot water in his trousers and socks. It was hot and when it hit his body he pulled in a deep gasp before he whooped. He turned and saw Steve rubbing his hair so that all the hot water could get into it, and it was a wild, tangled mess. He shoved it out of his face and caught Bucky looking. They both grinned.

“I feel human again,” Steve said.

Bucky let his eyes close as he felt the dirt and grime of the weeks they had spent traveling melt out of him. His skin could breathe once the layer of sweat washed away. Human again. Human.

#

They dried off and Bucky wandered around in his towel, his muscles feeling fresh and new from the heat, his dog tags already cold on his skin. His wet trousers were drying on the edge of one of the empty bunks, a puddle collecting where it dripped. He decided that would be somebody else’s problem.

“I’m gonna go--there,” he heard Steve say.

Steve was vaguely pointing to the bunk on the right side of the room.

“It’s called a bed,” Bucky teased.

“Yeah, that.”

Steve collapsed into it, his towel barely holding onto his hips as he hit the mattress. By the time Bucky put on new boxers and slipped on the overlarge Finnish, patterned sweater he had been given, Steve was dead asleep. Bucky stood by his bed, watched Steve’s face. It was slack, his bottom lip plump and hanging open slightly. His dog tags were bundled up around his throat, the only thing he was wearing. Then Bucky’s eyes wandered to look at Steve’s bare back.

It was still strange to see Steve with tattoos. Symbols travelled up his spine, a spell from Dernier. The script was an ancient Sumerian charm that Gabe had checked and double-checked for accuracy, even though Dernier argued with him in rapid French. It had been passed down to him from his father, of course it was accurate, was the gist of the argument Bucky could understand. A word in cuneiform was tattooed above each vertebrae, even disappearing into his hairline, creating a ladder out of some of the oldest words ever written down.

Dernier had explained that Steve’s spirit “was not fitting into the shape of his flesh and bones”, whatever that meant. There were parts of Steve that were plugged up, spaces that were too bent. Blood and soul alike wouldn’t flow. Bucky had stayed with Steve through the whole process. Dernier’s needle hit the bone of the spine through paper-thin skin and Steve would grit his teeth, his hand clamping on Bucky’s fingers. He knew there was a lot of pain by the way Steve insisted there wasn’t.

Bucky hadn’t thought it would be worth all that, but these days Steve could breathe, and he stood a little straighter.

He lifted Steve up and aside. Steve stirred a bit, waking but not surprised, used to Bucky carrying him to bed. Steve had a bad habit of falling asleep on the couch, and Bucky knew that was bad for his scoliosis. He never told Steve that was why he was doing it, knew the kid would act sore about it. Bucky moved to get the blankets out from under him, about to pull away the damp towel around his waist. Steve grabbed his wrist, made Bucky look at him.

“You’re not my mother,” Steve said.

It was a little strike, hearing Steve give him that tone, even through the sleep in that voice. Steve had been stubborn about Bucky taking care of him before, but he’d never heard this kind of anger. It was resentment. Bucky let go of the sheets, his hands open, as if to say _alright_.

Steve pulled the covers around him and curled over. He didn’t see Bucky snatch away the towel so it wouldn’t dampen the bed.

Night laid over them like a heavy blanket once Bucky turned the lights out. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t drop off. His muscles were loose and warm, and he was drowsy. Even though he could barely keep his eyes open, his brain wouldn’t be quiet. He kept picturing it, the way he’d done since it happened. The blood on the knife had turned from looking like some kind of sick Halloween joke knife made of candy, and had become redder and darker in his mind. When he thought about it then, lying in the hut and staring at the square of light the moon cast through the window, he remembered the blood as almost black.

He heard Steve whimper. A jolt he couldn’t control went through Bucky and he looked.

Steve was sitting up in bed. He could see just the outline of a thin form holding himself up with his elbows. Bucky got up, sat on the edge of the bed.

“Can’t sleep either, huh?” Bucky said.

“Yeah,” Steve whispered.

They both knew he’d been asleep, and that was the sound Steve made after a nightmare. They both knew which truth was wrapped in the lie.

Bucky pulled himself out of bed, lighting the gas lantern on the table between them before he came over, sat next to Steve in the bunk.

“You gonna talk about it, or am I gonna have to wait for you to be ready?” Bucky asked.

Steve was quiet and hidden in the dim light. He was looking far and away.

“I really thought I was going to get through this war without having to kill anybody,” Steve said.

“I was tryin’ to help you do that,” Bucky said. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault.”

“Stop sayin’ things are your fault, Buck. First you apologize for saving my life, now this? You had a gun barrel to your head. I did it. I don’t regret it. I just wish it didn’t bother me. If I’m here, I want to be a soldier. I want to be like you.”

Bucky felt a tick in his chest, and he was hidden enough in the dark that he allowed his eyebrows to knot together.

“Like me?” Bucky asked.

“You’re not bothered by any of this,” Steve said.

Being stabbed would have been kinder. Bucky had tried to bring down the casualties, even when engaging with the Empire, but he still had to kill. He realized that he didn’t feel much when he did, not after that first shock. They were the ones who were going to use Steve like a lab rat, use him up, and empty him until he was burned out, no longer useful. He was shocked at how little remorse he felt for anyone willing to do that.

He felt the bottom fall out, needed to grab on to anything and the words just came out.

“That just means you’re a better man than me,” Bucky stated.

He turned to look at Steve, smiled. And then he couldn’t smile. Steve’s eyes were narrow and they caught the oily light. He was moments from tears, and it was then that Bucky realized it was for his sake.

“Bucky--,” Steve started.

“Worry about yourself,” Bucky said with a shrug. “This war--we’re all doing what we gotta. You just gotta keep in mind why we’re doing this.”

“I haven’t forgotten. So why isn’t it easier?”

“Because you’re a good person.”

“You keep telling me that like you didn’t join for the same reason. You knew it was the right thing to do. Because we got no right to give anything less than everything. So why does it bother me so much to do the same thing?”

“Because you’re a good person.”

“So are you. You’re here, too. You enlisted. I’m only here on a technicality. Stop saying that.”

“You’re here because you’re special.”

That laugh again, deep in his nose, closing his eyes before those contained tears could really be a threat.

“Yeah, all you gotta do to be special is die,” Steve laughed. “And then go a little insane, I guess.”

“You were always special,” Bucky said. “I always thought so. You really don’t know that, do you?”

“The little pipsqueak who kept getting you into trouble because I didn’t know how to walk away from a fight.”

“The little pipsqueak I followed every time.”

“Come on,” Steve implored as he smiled and laughed, and to Bucky’s relief there was nowhere near as much bitterness in them as there had been before.

“Nah, really,” Bucky said. “There’s a reason people love you.”

“Yeah, people are just lining up to tell me that,” Steve said.

“They should. I should have told you that.”

Steve looked up at him, past brows cocked in amusement. Bucky tried to smile, but he couldn’t do it anymore. Whatever had been with him his whole life, whatever talent it was that made it possible not to show his cards to Steve fell away at the worst possible time.

He tried to keep the panic from his face as he saw realization turn Steve’s face slack, eyes wider. Bucky tried, but he was failing. He could feel it in the shape of terror around his own eyes. He was going to laugh, to say _You wish, Rogers_ , or something smart, but the path from his head to his mouth had snapped like bad wiring.

“Don’t tell me this,” Steve said, voice a flat, low warning.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Bucky lied.

He started to pull away, was about to say goodnight, but Steve’s hand was a fist around his dog tags in the next moment.

“You can’t be serious, Buck,” Steve said.

“Okay, I get it,” Bucky said. “It was just a joke, calm down.”

“ _Bucky_. Please tell me you’re lying.”

“When did you become one of those temperance people all of a sudden? Let me get some sleep.”

“I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was thirteen, you idiot.”

It was silent. Bucky could hear the blood in his ears. He just stared at Steve. He couldn’t be lying. Steve couldn’t lie. He was terrible at it. This couldn’t even be a sad joke, not with the way Steve looked at him.

_No_ , Bucky thought. _No, no, no. This is going to be so much harder_.

“When was it for you?” Steve asked. “I was thirteen. What about you? Fourteen? Before? _Bucky_.”

His grasp was more desperate and Bucky was swaying, almost falling out of his grip.

He looked at Steve, right in the eyes, the dim light making the blue of his eyes dark. Their curiosity, their perception, were bright and piercing despite barely being able to see him in the low flame-light. He knew what Steve wanted, and it wasn’t a kiss, it wasn’t an embrace. It was an explanation.

Bucky’s mouth was open, slack, and it moved a bit as he tried to make words with it.

“I couldn’t kiss you,” Barnes said. “I can’t do that to myself.”

“Why?” Steve asked through desperately gritted teeth.

Bucky scrambled to find the words as Steve’s face started to reflect a self-doubt going inwards. It was Bucky’s first instinct always to make sure that look stayed off that face.

“I had this image in my head,” Bucky said, unable to catch the thoughts as they tumbled out. “I had it since I could remember. Everybody was running around trying to kiss girls and I didn’t wanna. I thought it would spoil it. I knew I’d meet somebody and then we’d kiss and then I’d know.”

“Know what?” Steve asked, and Bucky could hear the fear in his voice.

“That I’d spend the rest of my life with that person. I saw you, I knew it was you, even though you were covered in snot and blood. Maybe because of it, I don’t know.”

Steve had his hands on Bucky’s neck then, pulling him close until he touched his forehead to Bucky’s temple. Bucky closed his eyes, shut them up. Steve was so close, and Bucky’s skin was so hot with the desire to touch him. He couldn’t. He couldn’t do that to himself. He couldn’t do that to Steve. Not now. Not with the guns and the ghouls. Not with what might come after.

“Why didn’t you kiss me to find out?” Steve demanded. “Why didn’t you kiss me  ‘cos you wanted to?”

“Why didn’t _you_?” Bucky snapped.

“Because you walked into my room one day and said you were going to go to the shops with Kelly McClaren and she had a friend named Susie if I liked. Why the hell would you say that to me? Why’d you keep bringing me on all those double dates?”

  ”I got to go on dates with you, didn’t I?” Bucky said, his voice shaking with the laughter it got from the irony.

Bucky swallowed, sucked in lips that were dry, and moving much, much too much.

_God damn it_ , Bucky said in his head. Then it screamed in his head. _God damn it._

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve’s breath was his name and he grabbed the sides of his face to pull him into the kiss.

_This isn’t fair_ , Bucky wanted to scream until his voice was cracked and high. Because the kiss was exactly what he’d dreamed about.

Except that there was so much more. It was in the years attached to it, in the other kisses from other people who he had thought were just fine. In the memories he had formed with Steve even while he shoved this kind of love down so he could at least have him one way, as a friend, like a brother.

Steve was that person Bucky had wanted, he had been the whole time and he’d already lost him once. He made a pained sound that Steve thought meant he had grabbed Bucky too hard.

“You’re stuck with me now,” Bucky said when Steve broke the kiss. “I said I’d be with that person for the rest of my life.”

“Why are you talking like that’s not what we were already gonna do?” Steve teased.

The trill of those words moved through him the way a movement of music gave him chills. This time it was Bucky who pulled Steve into him, his hand pressed against bony ribs. Steve’s naked chest was pressed into Bucky’s ill-fitting sweater. Bucky remembered that all of Steve was naked when his hands went to Steve’s hips and there was an absence of boxer shorts. Steve had gone to sleep without a care about finding new clothes. When he slid his hand back up to caress Steve’s arms, he felt the gooseflesh the cold was giving him.

Bucky grabbed the blanket, wanted to get them both under the covers, but Steve had other plans.

Ninety-five pounds never seemed like a lot, but when Steve used that entire bulk to straddle Bucky’s waist and push him down into the thin mattress, it was enough.

They laid there in the dim light, the oil flame a flickering that licked their skin. They intended to make up for all the years not touching, not kissing, not laying against each other. Bucky discovered that Steve had an imagination, along with the will to let his mouth and his hands travel wherever they pleased. Bucky couldn’t do the same. It felt too miraculous, and if he touched Steve’s face, stroked the marked rise of his spine and shoulder-blades, any of the things he’d dreamed of doing, then the moment would disappear. It would disappear as soon as he admitted that he desired it. The most he could dare was let Steve do whatever he liked. The time passed and it could have been ten minutes, or an hour. Either would have felt too short.

Steve’s hands were at the waist of his boxers and Bucky’s hands went down, covered Steve’s. This was where he would normally stop. This time he helped Steve pull them down. As Steve took care of his boxers, Bucky grabbed the collar of his sweater and pulled it over his head. He cast it aside and it landed on the floor.

Bucky was hard, and Steve looked at his sex like it was a wonder. He lowered himself down. Bucky could only stare as Steve kissed down his chest and then into the dips in his hips. His breath came out in a crack as Steve began to kiss up from the base of his erection, up the side, holding it in a gentle grasp. He kissed it the same way he’d been kissing the side of Bucky’s neck just minutes before. The way Steve looked up at him when he did it, before he closed his eyes and took it all into his mouth was like looking into the eyes of a lion that could, but did not, devour him.

Bucky’s head rolled back and hung that way, his hand in Steve’s hair. He didn’t steer him, just let his fingers travel through the strands of soft hair the color of hay. Bucky tried to swallow, his throat working, Adam’s apple bobbling up and down. He couldn’t hold one thought from one moment to the next of sensation, but a truth about it broke through that anyway.

Steve was good at this. Too good at this. Steve Rogers, too scared to ask a dame to dance, who blushed at sex jokes despite the neighborhood they lived in. That Steve Rogers knew exactly what he was doing.

Bucky told him about the supplies through a throat heavy with lust. Steve rushed over to get the condom and the lubricant out of the supply box.

It took Bucky a long time to be ready to be fucked, but Steve was patient. He waited for Bucky, used more of the lube than he probably needed to. Steve reached inside him, and Bucky shuddered at each exploration of Steve’s long fingers. Just when Bucky was about to ask Steve to quit messing around, Steve pinned him again. Bucky smiled. Steve was acting like he could do it, really pin him down. Steve became aggressive about getting Bucky’s legs open and his hips up, the back of Bucky’s knees resting on Steve’s shoulders.

He did it to Bucky slow, wrist-pinning turning into holding his hands. He laid his forehead against Bucky’s. The way Steve rolled into him made Bucky bite his lips. He felt his eyes flick and roll into the back of his head every time Steve went deep enough to hit this one spot. He’d been told about it, laughed it off skeptically when friends of his talked back and forth about the things they did with their bodies, things Bucky had had no interest in, until he thought of it then, because he was with Steve.

Two things battled in him. He wanted Steve to fuck the come out of him as soon as possible, every nerve in his body lighting up for just that function. He wanted to get there, egged Steve on so it could happen already. He felt it build and wanted the release. He also wanted it to last forever, to be in this spot with Steve and this feeling and the pull under his belly. And then it was about to happen and he babbled about how close he was.

Bucky came onto his own belly and just when the orgasm washed over him and began to die, Bucky both disheartened and grateful that it was over, Steve reached down. Bucky wanted to know what his hands were doing touching him there when it was done.

It was like coming a second time when Steve pressed down on the soft flesh behind his balls. It caught Bucky so by surprise he jerked, fell back, slammed his head against the headboard and swore.

“Shit,” Steve said. “Bucky you okay?”

Bucky laughed. Despite the ringing in his head, what Bucky felt most was the blowout of whatever it was Steve had done. He thought about what he must have looked like from outside, panting and writhing, his belly shiny with come and his dog tags pooling on his chest. He knew he looked like a pathetic mess. He still laughed.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Bucky said.

“I learned a couple of tricks,” Steve said through a grin.

Steve pulled off the rubber before getting a better grip on Bucky’s hands again, lacing each finger together. He buried his face in Bucky’s neck and muffled his own orgasm against muscle. There was more wetness on Bucky’s belly after Steve had pressed against his hip to finish himself off. It had only taken a minute or so of him pressing down and Bucky stroking him to help him along.

When it was over, Steve was going to pull away, but Bucky clamped him on the back of his neck, and he squeezed tight. Bucky didn’t want to let go, and Steve didn’t want to be let go of.

Bucky wondered about getting up, or even sliding himself aside. No chance. His legs had shook when he’d come, and through the rush of what Steve had done after, and now he couldn’t make them work at all. He couldn’t have gotten back to his own bunk if he wanted to.

“Stevie,” Bucky whispered against his ear, his voice deep through the exhaustion.

“Yeah?” Steve panted.

There was a strain in that voice, like he wanted to hear something specific.

“What the hell happened in February?”

He saw Steve’s face close off. Bucky shook his head, and they both knew it was okay. Even though it was a real question, it was close enough to a joke to let it go. Steve relaxed into him again, the absent touching and kissing against Bucky’s muscles the last thing Bucky felt before he drifted off to sleep.  


	8. Chapter 8

**Italy—October, 1944**

Corporal Jim Morita stared at Bucky, head falling back, arms crossed. Bored. Unimpressed.

Good. That was a good sign. No intimidation. Bucky nodded, opened the file, which was mostly a psychological tactic. He already knew what was in it.

“You’re probably wondering what you did to get pulled out of your tent by MPs at four in the morning,” Bucky said.

“Or you could just tell me and I can get breakfast,” Morita said. “Powdered eggs with canned sausage. My favorite.”

“Be grateful. Didn’t even have that where I just was.”

“Yeah? Where was that?”

“Classified. You came up on our radar recently, Corporal. There was a whole committee set to meet you today.”

“Yeah? What happened to them?”

“They’re sitting in the mess tent. Apparently, they don’t want to arrest you on an empty stomach. They were going to kick you out of the army. But you’ve gotten out of every accusation that would have gotten you a dishonorable discharge. I doubt you would have needed our help today, but I’m here anyway.”

“You a lawyer? I’ve had some lawyers try to represent me. There’s big cash in suing the government sometimes, but that meant getting the discharge.”

“I’m not a lawyer.”

Morita shrugged, adjusted himself in the chair. He pinched the bridge of his nose and Bucky realized exactly the kind of tired he must have been.

“Look, I’ve been in a few scrapes, but I follow orders, I do my job,” Morita said. “Whatever Cormac’s been putting in the complaint box is just another guy trying to set me up.”

“Yeah," Bucky said. "The things he wrote in that box _were_ a little worrying. Which is why we had to take a look in your footlocker.”

“Hey, if there’s ladymags in there, that would be Cormac.”

Bucky reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out something solid and rectangular. He deposited it on the table gently, but solidly. He saw the edges of Morita’s eyes widen, but he had his face under control in the next second.

“I like playing cards, so what?” Morita said. “You never play gin rummy?”

“Not with tarot cards,” Bucky said.

“I do some tricks with  ‘em sometimes, too.”

“With _these cards_?”

“What were you expecting? I-ching?”

“I want to know what you’re doing with _these_ cards.”

“I don’t understand the question. Somebody gave  ‘em to me, I dunno.”

“Somebody just gave you a deck of Visconti tarocchi?”

Morita tensed. He kept his arms crossed, but his shoulders were a bit closer to his ears.

“Are you--are you speaking Italian? I don’t speak Italian.”

“No. You’re fluent in Japanese, your German is nearly as good, but I heard your Italian is just as conversational as your French. But we’re getting off the subject. You mind telling me what a guy from Fresno is doing with an authentic deck of fifteenth century Visconti tarocchi?”

Morita huffed out of his nose, glared and looked away.

“I didn’t steal them,” Morita said.

“Morita,” Bucky said firmly enough that he turned back. “I’m not here to kick you out of the army.”

“It’s just a deck of cards.”

“The pieces of cardboard palm readers buy to reel in suckers are just decks of cards. You mind telling me what you do with these? They’re special, aren’t they? Why don’t you tell me about what they help you do?”

“Wow,” Morita said. Something crossed his face, a bitterness that he was drowning in his own amusement. “This one, I’m surprised you guys haven’t tried this one. I mean, really? Getting me sectioned? That’s a nice one.”

Bucky held the deck, pushed the cards towards Morita in a single slide.

“Shuffle the deck. Show me my arcana,” Bucky asked.

It wasn’t quite an order. Bucky didn’t want it to be an order.

Morita grabbed the deck, shuffled, threw down a card, his grin telling Bucky exactly where on the scale of zero to “eat me” his level of caring sat.

Three swords intersecting, a banner surrounding them. Three of swords.

“Though luck,” Morita said.

“Now do it again,” Bucky said. “Tell me why I’m here.”

Morita’s eyes flicked casually down to see what he had dropped and he jumped in his chair.

Flames shot out from the crenelated highest level of a building made of crooked perspective lines, and two men were collapsed at his base.

_La torre_.

“Shit,” Morita said. “What the hell are the Nazis up to this time?”

#

“I’m going to give you a quick tour of the setup we’ve got here,” Bucky said. “It’s not much, but a bunch of creepy army research in the middle of a war, we had to get a nice ruin for a base.”

“Makes sense,” Morita responded.

The north of Italy was a tough spot to be in, and the war hadn’t been kind to a lot of it. The Etruscan palace they’d been looking for was pretty worse for wear when the Paranormal Reserve had flushed the Empire out of it. Once upon a time, it had been grand, round, lofty. It was secreted away in a forest, no roads to it in centuries, not until the Empire had made one. The SPR had only been able to find where the Empire was going, and why, when Gabe’s translation of ancient Greek gave him references that could be turned into coordinates. When those matched the transmissions coming in over a stolen radio, they had to move. It had lead them to the ruin.

They traveled down a long corridor that brought them into the building. Morita couldn’t help staring at the massive hole in the wall just inside the entrance with mortar burns still blackening the stone. Bucky waved to keep Morita’s attention on him.

“So the SPR operates wherever we need to,” Bucky began. “But the team you’ll be working with is--“

“The Howling Commandos,” Morita said. “I remember. Which, nice name by the way.”

“Thanks. Agent Carter picked it out. You’ll meet her in a few. First, I’ll introduce you to the big gun.”

“The what?”

Bucky stopped in front of a massive wooden door that was shackled by iron. It was intimidating, ancient and reinforced by army engineers. It was meant to keep things out.

“So this is where Dugan has locked himself,” Bucky said.

“Dugan?” Morita said.

“Private Dugan. Couple of years back he inherited a house from a distant relative, and they found him unconscious in the basement after his friends hadn’t heard from him for a week. He spent about a month sitting in a chair, totally catatonic. Then one day he got up and just started building things. Now he’s building things for us.”

“What kind of things?”

“Big guns. Machines. Things. Now I have to tell you now before you make the same mistake I did. Do _not_ make sudden moves around him, avoid making loud noises, and try to avoid the subject of space.”

“Like, outer space?”

The door jerked open and Dugan was standing behind the door, the smoke from his cigar coming out of his mouth in a plume. Bucky worried that the words  ‘outer space’ had travelled through the door. But Dugan’s ire was a mild, grumpy anger, and not a terror of things unknowable and unseen, like usual. He took one glance at Morita.

“This is him?” Dugan asked. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Problem?” Morita asked.

“You look about twelve,” he said and glowered at him.

“Downstairs in five minutes,” Bucky said.

Dugan made a low, dissatisfied growl and shut the door. Inside, something exploded and glass shattered.

Bucky motioned for Morita to follow him. As they traveled, someone was coming up towards them and greeted them warmly.

“This is Falsworth,” Bucky said.

“Monty, please,” he said and offered his hand so fast that Morita took it automatically. He leaned in and Morita leaned back like they were pushed by the same wind. “You must be Jim. Terribly good to meet a new face, these lads are getting quite dull.”

“What do you, uh, do?” Morita said. There was a dull twitch in his face.

“Tactics and explosives. Other areas of expertise.”

“He’s our necromancer,” Bucky said.

“Terribly fascinating subject,” Monty said, straightening his hat.  ”Runs in the blood, you know. I assume we’re meeting.”

Something behind Monty's eyes was less bright and when Bucky looked at Morita, he’d seen it too.  

“Five minutes,” Bucky said.

Bucky led Morita down a chamber, the air getting cold and damp as they descended. The walls and stairs were hewn right out of the cliff the ruin had been built into. A man hurried past them and said something in rapid French as he rushed past.

“Who was that?” Morita asked.

“That was Dernier,” Bucky said. "Former French Resistance."

“What does he do?”

“Depends on the day.”

“Kind of like a jack-of-all-trades thing?”

“No, I think it literally is the position of the stars on that particular day. Watch your head here.”

They both ducked as they came into a low entryway which opened up into another chamber.

It was massive and round, the ceiling reaching back up to the cliff level, shafts of yellow light reflecting off white stone, making the chamber glow. Six statues of men and women were spread evenly around the walls, and the smooth, round floor dipped down into a circle indent that was twenty feet in diameter.

Morita had to bring his gaze back down to earth as Bucky, still leading him, halted in front of two people he had not yet met.

“I see Sergeant Barnes had the charm I hoped he would have,” Peggy said as she lowered her clipboard to shake hands with Morita. “I’m Agent Carter. I’m in charge of operations. Welcome to the Howling Commandoes.”

“Ma’am,” Morita said and shook her hand.

“And this is Gab--Jones, our translator and cryptographer.”

“Finally, somebody with a regular job,” Morita said and shook his hand.

“If you say so,” Jones said. “Good to meet you.”

Dugan and Monty were coming into the room and they began to take their places in the circle, joining Dernier who had been waiting in the cente. They milled, whispering to each other, and Morita was looking around. Bucky would bet his ears were hot.

“So, what are we doing down here?” Morita asked.

“I heard you’re good with doors,” Peggy said. “And we happen to be right on top of one.”

Morita looked down. He stepped back and up, out of the circle.

“It doesn’t feel like one,” Morita said.

“Wait,” Peggy said and smirked.

“Is there a particular thing we’re waiting for?”

“We’re waiting for The Captain,” Monty said, breaking away from his conversation with Dugan.

“The Captain?”

“Now, I have to warn you,” Bucky whispered, pulling Morita aside “Cap is the guy who leads us in the field. I don’t want to put too much pressure on you, but it’s wise to make a good impression. If he gets even a little apprehensive about you, you might not cut it here after all.”

“Why, is he a hardass or something?”

“Not all the time. But we trust his instincts. And he is a tough son of a bitch. I’m pretty sure if we didn’t have a lot to do right here and now, he would have made a beeline for Berlin and decked Hitler right in his face as soon as he enlisted. First time I met him, he was taking on three guys on his own, all bigger than him. He held his own, even though blood was comin’ out of his face. I had to tear him out of that fight. My life has pretty much been like that ever since.”

“Shit.”

“Look sharp. Make it count.”

Morita turned around to look where Bucky had glanced. He hadn’t expected to have to look down. Steve had already approached, but his footfalls had been light enough that Morita hadn’t heard him until he was a few feet away.

“Hi,” Morita began. “I, uh--“

“It’s Jim, right?” Steve said and held out his hand. “Steve Rogers.”

“Aren’t I supposed to salute?” Morita asked and shook Steve’s hand firmly.

“I’m not actually a captain. I’ll tell you the joke we when know each other a little better. Bucky told me a bit about what you can do.”

“What I can do?”

“Am I making you uncomfortable? Nobody here is going to judge you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Worried? I’m not worried. About what?”

Steve looked at Bucky. He smiled with half his mouth and all of his eyes. Morita turned around to look at Bucky and he asked for answers with just his expression, but Bucky just shrugged.

“I like him,” Steve said.

“Thank you?” Morita said. “Is this the part where you tell me why you took me from the front lines?”

“What do you know about the Secret Empire?” Peggy asked as she circled around to Steve’s side.

“Nothing, but it sounds like that might be the point,” Morita responded.

“Very good,” Peggy said with a smile. “The Nazis are fighting this war on many fronts, Corporal Morita. So many, in fact, that I don’t think they’re all under Hitler’s control. They have a political division, a deep science division, a propaganda division, and then we became aware of the paranormal division.

“The Secret Empire revealed themselves unintentionally in an attempt to kidnap someone they believed to be a conduit to the paranormal realm. This conduit believed himself to be unwell and was under treatment at Bellevue hospital in New York. He had a voice in his mind giving him instruction and information. When he left the hospital, several agents of the Empire kidnapped him in order to gain agency over the entity which was communicating with him.”

“What happened?” Morita asked.

“They were almost successful, but the conduit managed to escape, with help. We caught up with him, and over the last year we’ve been trying to figure out what they ultimately wanted with this entity. It’s led us here. We liberated this ruin from the remaining German forces when we found out it was not just a base of operations, but part of their plans for when they retrieved the conduit again.”

Morita looked around at the massive chamber, then back down to the indent in the floor, the circle within the greater circle of the chamber.

“They were going to open a door here,” Morita said.

“Exactly,” Peggy said.

“So what happened to the conduit?”

“Hi,” Steve said.

“Woah, wait a second,” Morita said, holding his hands up as soon as the information clicked. “You’re telling me you’ve been trying to keep this guy from falling into Nazi hands for a year, and you ended up just bringing him here yourselves? What kind of operation is this?”

He looked around to the other men, who stared back at him, not understanding what the problem was.

“We have use for the door as well,” Peggy said. “It has strategic value.”

“What could you possibly want to do with a door that Nazis were keen to open?” Morita demanded to know.

“Hey,” Steve said, firm enough that Morita’s head jerked to look at him. “This thing is in _my_ head. I would like to know what the hell it is, too.”

Morita sighed, and his hands rested on his hips. He was deep in thought, but the kind of thoughts where he seemed to already know what he was going to think.

“Okay,” Morita said. “How are we going to do this?”

“However you usually do this,” Bucky said.

Morita turned to the group around him. He had the look of a man ready to be tricked. It took a while for him to accept that what he was seeing was real.

“You know, I’ve been trying to avoid this kind of stuff,” Morita said.

“But could you do it?” Peggy asked. “Walk away, now that you’re aware of what’s happening.”

“’Course not. Alright. Just gimme a second.”

Morita reached into one of the pouches in his trouser legs. He pulled out his deck of cards, began to shuffle them. Then he looked at the rest of the Howling Commandoes, who were milling around in the middle of the circle.

“You’re gonna need to get out,” he said.

They all looked down at the floor under their feet like they were expecting it to be a trap door, jumping out as they realized what they were really standing on.

Morita and Steve stood at the edge of the pit. They looked down into it like it was full of deep water.

“You ready?” Morita asked Steve.

“I’ve been ready,” Steve said, with a small smile. “But thanks for checking anyway.”

Bucky watched Morita’s face, waited to see it, the skepticism. Then it wasn’t there. Morita nodded, but to tell Steve it’d be okay, that he knew what he was doing. No part of him was acting like Steve wasn’t ready, or strong enough. Morita was letting him know that he could count on him. He had no doubt that Steve was other than what he was.

Bucky felt a little bit of relief wash through him, loosening his shoulders.

Steve stepped inside the circle and strode into the center of it. Nothing happened that Bucky could see, but Morita must have known something. He had been leaning in to enter it, but stepped back a half-step instead. When Steve turned back around and saw Morita hovering at the edge, a little worry entered his face.

“Is something wrong?” Steve said. He was looking around him, hadn’t seen anything change.

“I just--I’ve opened a lot of doors in my time,” Morita said. “I’ve never had one like this.”

Bucky tried to image what door he was talking about. Of course it wasn’t visible. He wasn’t like the other Commandos. They saw things; they did things; they were all extraordinary. A lot of Bucky was glad he hadn’t seen as much as Dugan, or Steve, or Monty. Probably Dernier too, though they knew so little about him. Even Gabe’s intelligence made him above the usual kind of perception. But there was a fraction of him that still wished he could see what Morita was seeing--then maybe he could help.

Morita exhaled like a man preparing himself to lift a heavy weight. He looked in his deck for the right card, pulled it out. He walked into the circle, but kept his distance from Steve. Then he held the card out, the back of the card facing Steve. From behind Morita, Bucky saw the card that he had picked. A man holding a weapon as a beast lay submissive at his feet.

_La forza_

Then Morita let the card go. The card did not drop. It hovered in the air like he’d pinned it to an invisible wall. Bucky wasn’t sure if it was the card or his vision, but he swore the edges of it were vibrating.

And then it was the entire circle that was vibrating. His view of them was coming in and out of focus, a visual version of static coming in over radio. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Dugan looking nauseated.

Bucky watched the way Steve was looking at Morita. His face was firm and he nodded, letting Morita know he trusted him. Bucky felt like someone had rapped on his heart with their knuckles.

Everyone stepped back as light flickered and the sound seemed to be sucked out of the room.

And then everything stopped.

“Screw this,” Morita said.

The flickering was gone. Steve had been closing his eyes against the light and grimacing, but he opened one eye to see what was going on. Morita snatched the card back out of the air and stuffed his card deck back in his pocket.

“What happened?” Bucky asked, coming forward.

“Screw this and screw all of you,” Morita said. “I’m not doing this. I’m not opening this door. Not this one. Discharge me, I don’t care, I’m not messing with this.”

He was already heading out of the chamber, his hands in the air. Bucky looked back at Steve. All the hope had drained out of his face, but he still managed to look concerned for Jim.

“Corporal Morita--,” Peggy began, her voice clip with authority.

“I’ll go,” Monty volunteered.

He went up after Morita by himself. The rest of them came close and mulled around.

“Smart kid,” Dugan said.

Gabe hit him lightly on the arm and glared at him.

They all turned to Steve, who came forward with eyes lined with worry.

“What do we do now?” Steve asked.

#

Bucky was already peeling his blue peacoat off when he stepped into the room Steve had claimed for them. The coat clung to him like it was reluctant to give up its hold. They had brought in Steve and Bucky’s cots and footlockers after the rooms had been cleared of the debris of abandonment and the occasional animal occupation. In the big stone room, it was suddenly apparent how little they carried with them in the world. Though when they were dragging all of it with them in the field, it had felt like too much.

Steve rolled his head and rubbed his muscles. Bucky came up and grabbed him by the back of the neck, absently rubbing where the knot in Steve’s shoulder usually was.

“I really thought it was gonna happen,” Steve said.

“It’ll happen,” Bucky said.

“I’m not gonna force him to do something he doesn’t want to do. We’ve been at this for over a year. Sometimes we forget this stuff is scary as all hell.”

“He’ll come around. I got a good feeling about that guy.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

“And I think Monty is sweet on him.”

Bucky’s hand dropped from his shoulder and Steve turned around, a brow cocked in amusement.

“Already?” Steve said.

“Oh yeah,” Bucky said. “He’s already charmed. You think we should warn Morita?”

Bucky unclasped his belt and let it fall onto the cot. It was heavy with supplies and made a hard sound as it fell onto the unforgiving fabric.

“No way,” Steve said, the laugh in those words barely contained as he dropped into his own cot and slipped out of his boots. “I wanna see how that turns out.”

There was no room on the cot for it, there never was, but they both laid in it anyway. Steve had just begun to accept that Bucky was going to collapse onto him at the end of the day. Steve made a gentle puff at Bucky’s sudden weight, because Bucky never came down gentle. But a second later Bucky had his face buried in Steve’s neck, his body tucked between open legs.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Bucky said, his voice muffled in Steve’s skin.

“I got something pleasant we can talk about,” Steve said.

Bucky felt Steve reach down and into his pocket. He pulled two thick cards out of them, showed them to Bucky like a winning poker hand.

“No,” Bucky said, his voice heavy with astonishment.

“They were supposed to come in a month ago. I requisitioned them in August. I hoped they’d come before we got to this point, but I guess we’ll have to use them after this is done.”

“I never thought I’d see the day. R&R.”

“Five days of R&R.”

“Where?”

“Paris.”

Bucky’s eyes rolled back into his head as he thought about it.

“You know what they have in Paris?” Bucky moaned.

“ _Bread_ ,” Steve finished.

“Real bread.”

“Warm bread at five in the morning.”

“We won’t eat anything powdered, canned, or preserved for five whole days.”

“How much do you love me right now?”

“I love you so much.”

Bucky laid a kiss on his mouth that he had to inhale through the nose for. He felt the smug smile on Steve’s lips that opened into a full laugh when Bucky jabbed him in the ribs. They settled back into tired and collapsed, Steve letting his fingers move through Bucky’s hair in absent patterns.

“You always kiss me like that,” Steve said, his voice traveling like a low, vibrating music into Bucky’s ear.

“Like what?” Bucky said through a smile.

“Like you just got home from war and I’m your sweetheart.”

“So?”

“So war’s not done, and I’m not some sweetheart.”

Bucky just shrugged. His hand travelled up Steve’s shirt.

“Is this always the same?” Bucky asked.

“It’s always good,” Steve said, his smile becoming wicked, curled at the edges.

“Like the first time?”

“Nothing’s gonna be like the first time.”

Bucky lifted himself up, grabbed Steve’s legs and led his hips up to be flush with his own.

“Yeah, but I can try,” Bucky said, fingers already working on Steve’s button fly.

They froze at the sound of the heavy metal and wood door clacking and creaking open.

“Hey, we need--aaaah damn it,” Gabe said, turning his head away. “You guys gotta put a sign on the door or somethin’.”

“Or you could knock,” Bucky said, his voice nearly broken with exasperation.

“What is it?” Steve asked, getting his breath back and propping himself up on his elbows.

“Some activity on the perimeter,” Gabe said, his hands over his eyes.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Give us a minute.”

“A half an hour,” Bucky said, putting an arm around Steve’s waist and pulling him so they were pressed together.

“ _A minute_ ,” Steve said again.

“Half an hour.”

“First one would be better,” Gabe said and closed the door behind him.

#

A minute later they came through the entrance of the ruin, Peggy waiting for them, with Jones standing with a radio with German text running across it. He had the headphones against one ear.

“They’re being fairly quiet,” Gabe informed them as they approached. “They know we brought someone new in. They’re afraid he’s a psychic. Mind-reader, specifically. We should get one of those, by the way.”

“ _No we had better not_ ,” Peggy said.

“I’m going to ask the story behind that later,” Steve said.

Peggy shared a little smile with Steve. It had become a thing with them, Steve asking Peggy about her stories, of her long years investigating the paranormal. He collected her stories like people who gather interesting pebbles and put them in a mason jar just to have.

Steve had liked her from the start, and she had liked him, too. Bucky sometimes lamented that she was the kind of girl Bucky had always tried to find for him on double-dates, but never could. Gabe and Bucky shared a little smile, knowing it was a weird place to stand, next to those two. Bucky sometimes wondered if Gabe got jealous, just to know if it was strange that Bucky himself wasn’t.

“Honey,” Gabe said and they both turned to him. “We’ll be expecting guests in a half an hour.”

“An unexpected party,” Peggy said. “Always very impolite. But let’s be gracious hosts anyway.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Italy--October, 1944**

The reserve soldiers were stationed at the obvious points of invasion, but there were only two dozen of them, and they had to spread them thin. The Empire had been given three days to recoup, as long as it had taken them to learn where Morita was and retrieve him.

Nobody had wanted to say it, that the mission was, so far, a failure. Morita could still change his mind, but the fact was that they had depended on him opening the door right away, so that they could get Steve out of the reach of the Empire.

When Bucky glanced at Morita out of the corner of his eyes, he saw. Morita knew. He had the look of a man who resented not being told things were a little his fault.

“Corporal Morita,” Peggy said. “I know this is not why we brought you here, but we need as many fighting men as we can get when it comes to Zemo’s forces. If you could see that--“

“Listen,” Morita said. “I think you’re all crazy. You are. You’re all nuts. I’m not messing around with whatever you’re doing here. I’m not opening any doors. But I’m a soldier and I’ve stayed a soldier because I do my damn job, and then some. Whatever you need, ma’am.”

It was clear Peggy hadn’t appreciated his tone, but she nodded nonetheless.

“I need to borrow Sergeant Barnes,” Peggy said. “Morita, I need you to stay with Steve. Until Sergeant Barnes comes to collect him, you will be Steve Rogers’ protective detail.”

Morita nodded, and shared a glance with Steve.

“Yes ma’am,” Morita confirmed. “So what’s the plan?”

“You watch over him while we make sure the building is ready to be demolished,” she ordered.

“Why the hell would you do that? Isn’t this place, like--hundreds of years old?”

“It was always the plan,” Steve interrupted. “We had to find this place, and use it, then destroy it. Whatever the Empire wanted here, we can’t let them have it. It doesn’t matter if we don’t know. What matters is they don’t. And yeah, I get it. Etruscan art is hard for me to destroy. Took a lot of pictures, though.”

“Still doesn’t feel right,” Morita said.

“I know,” Steve said, and he smiled through an expression exactly the same as if he’d stubbed his toe.

#

Officially, Peggy, Dugan and Bucky were checking the wiring of Dernier’s bombs. Their business was really in the black room.

As they walked towards the back of the castle, he felt the air get oppressive as they got closer and closer to it.

Bucky hated the place. He was willing to bet Peggy did, too. Dugan despised the black room, without a doubt. Nobody had a worse reaction to it than Dugan. He snarled with his whole face to hide the fact he was terrified.

They walked in the room hidden behind a false wall, and it was with the same terrified awe as it had been the first time that they looked into the darkness.

The floor was black marble and onyx, a low ceiling leading back through a long chamber. The walls were black and when Peggy placed the lantern on the wall, there was along ribbon in dark grey painted on the walls, and in that ribbon were hundreds of figures. Etruscan paintings in grey, white, and black, probably centuries old.

He didn’t know why these images of men and women tearing at each other, of war and starvation, desolation, were so hard to look at. He’d seen worse with his own eyes, and these were barely an echo of that. But it was the room itself. Like being inside the heart of death.

Twin statues sat opposite each other--a goddess, helmed and with a spear, and a man holding wheat. Familiarity always rang when Bucky saw them.

“We’re really sure we can get this thing out of here safely?” Bucky asked.

“We have to at least try,” Peggy said.

Bucky planted his feet the same way he would on a boat, as if the floor underneath him were rocking. He stared at the painted gate at the end of the room. When they excavated it, finishing the work Zemo’s men were already doing, they were sure this was the door the book had mentioned. Then they found the circular chamber. They discovered that the black room was not a room for spiritual travels like the circular chamber was. This was a room for ritual. And it probably had to do with the pillar in the center of the room, covered in a black cloth.

“Alright,” Peggy said. “Let’s take it and get out of here.”

“We need to tell Steve, after this is done,” Bucky said.

Peggy turned to him sharply, her eyes narrowed.

“You said we shouldn’t,” she asked. “You’ve changed your mind?”

“If we tell him now, he won’t let us blow it up,” Bucky said with a tight smirk. “But after, when we’re at the rendezvous. But yeah--Steve needs to know. We kept this from him long enough.”

“Don’t tell him until it blows, though,” Dugan said.

“Afraid he’ll try to safe a historical monument?” Peggy teased.

“That’s not what this place is.”

“Then what is it?” Bucky asked.

“It’s a nightmare factory. I want to see it burn.”

Peggy reached up and lifted the sheet off the pillar, careful not to touch what was underneath. Dugan reacted as he always did at the sight of the thing--a swallowing that was suppressing his barely contained nausea.

The stone was green like malachite, but malachite did not glow. It was no larger than a golf ball, but it probably didn’t have to be. They knew not to touch it, because they’d seen one of the Empire’s soldiers try to steal it. Bucky had never known you could actually witness the soul being ripped from a man’s body, but it couldn’t have been anything else. The man’s body had jerked forward like it was pulled by a strong and invisible hand and something the shape of him appeared for less than a second and then snapped out of existence.

They only handled it with tongs after that. Then Dugan had started his project.

Dugan placed the box he had made in front of the pillar. It was made of leaden parts salvaged from spare bits of several tanks, but it looked like any other ammunition box. When he opened it, they saw the lining. It was thick and had been made to house the malachite, and only a malachite. There was spell written across the box, an especially intricate one making up the area around the clasp that sealed it closed. It was written in chalk, the lines only needing to be connected in order to lock it.

“I can do it,” Bucky volunteered.

“I’ll do it,” Dugan said.

“Are you sure?” Peggy asked.

“ _I’ll do it_ ,” Dugan snapped, incredulous, but still very nervous.

Dugan grasped the stone with the tongs. His hand was as steady as a surgeon’s, even though his face was broken into a sweat. The stone hummed when Dugan picked it up, as though it were protesting--or warning them. Dugan lowered it down into its case, the humming making the tongs vibrate in a resonance like a song. Dugan dropped it in the box and shut the lid. Bucky was sure he saw the stone shake hard enough that it was about to jump out of the box before Dugan secured it.

“That’s done,” Dugan said, recoiling. “Somebody else carry it.”

Peggy reached down, grabbed it by the handle.

“Let’s leave as soon as possible,” she suggested. “The Empire doesn’t know about the southern trail, and we--“

A shadow appeared on the wall behind her. It was too tall and too thin to be either of their shadows. A pair of white circles blinked open. She saw Bucky’s eyes go wide and that saved her.

She moved out of the way just as it reached out its hand for her. She drew her weapon and when she held her gun up, a charm of protection dangled from her fist. Bucky knew it was simple, and it wouldn’t work against something like that. It was all she had in her pocket at the time, and it wouldn’t be enough.

He had a choice.

When Bucky grabbed the shadow he screamed. The pain was blinding and it travelled up his left arm, tearing out of his mouth. Watching the flesh peel back from his own fingers, he knew it had never been a shadow. It was a void. Void was never meant to be touched.

He had no time to regret it, and wouldn’t have. It had done the trick.

It turned away from Peggy, the saucer-shaped, white eyes fixed on him, and Bucky at last knew what he saw in them. He looked beyond the shadow man, past the void of him, saw the figure in the back. He was standing, waiting, his hands folded over his waist.

Zazael. He knew what he was at last. He had come to collect the debt Bucky owed.

#

_Steve’s body was still warm under the layer of cooling water. The heat of the fever that had killed Steve was warming Bucky’s skin. He couldn’t repair the disconnect between the warmth of Steve’s skin and the coldness he knew was meant to accompany death. It wasn’t Steve that felt cold. It was Bucky. He was nearly numb from the chill, blood prickling in cold fingers, and a skin that didn’t feel like his own._

_He’d never known New York to be so still. There was not a whisper, not a shout, no creaking of his apartment building._

_He heard a crash outside._

_Someone was shouting in the next moment. Then there was another voice, and a howl of laughter. They were drunk, hooting, and what he’d heard had been a bottle breaking against concrete._

_Bucky’s anger was complete. How could they? How could anybody? Didn’t anybody understand?_

_Bucky held Steve closer, his limpness heavy despite the loss of the resistance of muscle and the missing weight of a soul. Yet he held him. His fury multiplied as he comprehended fully that the body he held was vacant. Didn’t they know? How could they not? Steve was dead, and the rest of the world was just continuing. How could anything still be happening?_

_“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Bucky whispered._

_And something else knew this wasn’t right._

_Bucky didn’t know when the old man had appeared in the room, but there he was. He stood between the bathtub and the sink. He was frail, and wore a suit of beige, crÃ¨me, and cornflower blue._

_Bucky was still. He was frightened, but not as frightened as he was confused. Because he knew the old man wasn’t there._

_“Be not afraid,” said the old man._

_Bucky’s grip on Steve’s flesh tightened._

_“Who are you?” Bucky asked._

_“I am Zazael,” the old man said._

_“That doesn’t tell me jack, old man.”_

_Zazael nodded in deference. He came forward, his hands open in a gesture of peace. Bucky recoiled._

_“I cannot say who and what I am,” Zazael said. “He may hear me, from even the deepest reached of the universe, if I say. But amongst your kind, the word for what I am is common and hides in plain sight.”_

_“What the hell are you doing here?” Bucky demanded._

_“You were right.”_

_“What?”_

_“You were right. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”_

_Bucky looked down at the body in his arms. Steve could have been sleeping. His face was peaceful, long lashes laid over pale skin tinged with green and purple. In a moment of forgetting, the brother of trauma, Bucky wanted to watch him like this until the dawn woke Steve. He wanted nothing more to see sky-blue out of those open eyes. If Steve did not open them, and he saw that blue in the morning sky, he wanted to move somewhere with nothing but grey clouds, and to stay inside on the odd sunny day. He didn’t want to see that color again unless Steve opened his god-damned eyes._

Open your god-damned eyes _, Bucky screamed inside his head._

_“He will open his eyes, but only if you help me,” Zazael said._

_He looked up at the old man._

_Bucky knew that this was no old man. This Zazael could be anyone at all. Bucky also knew that he didn’t care one bit._

_“Help you with what?”_

_Zazael was not finished outlying the details of the proposal before Bucky muttered a monotone “yes.”_

#

_I guess it’s now_ , Bucky thought.

The shadow man reached back, his arms too long, stretching, and he grabbed the spear of a goddess.

It pulled it forward, stabbed.

Bucky’s remaining breaths would be staggered between the gulps of blood that travelled up his throat.

Bucky grabbed the spear by the base, tried to keep it from coming out of his belly. He knew it was the end, but he still had instincts left over from some ancestor, scratching to survive, to beat off the jackals that would eat him alive. It did nothing. Falling down was a relief.

From his place where he had dropped he saw the shadow turning its attentions to Peggy. He reached for her--not her. The case, reaching to grab it while Peggy stepped back.

A burst of light filled the room and the shadow screamed, more like metal scraping together than a voice. Peggy leapt back, knowing what was coming next.

Dugan held the pistol. He had already used one barrel, smoking with a strange blue smoke, but the other was still full. It was whirring with its charge and just as the shadow man leaped for him, Dugan’s gun fired.

The shadow slammed against the wall and was forced out of the room through the wall. It disappeared and wouldn’t return. Not when the after-effects of the blast had burned a ward of protection onto the wall, interlocking stars and geometric shapes.

Bucky’s blood was a dark pool on the onyx floor. He felt it drain out of him, saw gushes as his heart betrayed him by pumping it out of him. He saw both of their faces as they stared down at him. Dugan’s scowl had been righteous, but when he saw the wound, really looked at it, it was empty with shock. Peggy’s hand was over her mouth, eyes wide.

Peggy dropped her flashlight on the ground so it shone on him. He heard her beside him before he felt her hands. She adjusted him carefully to look at the wound and he heard her breath hitch.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she said, her voice trying to be firm. “I need to stop the bleeding. I’m going to apply a bandage, just hold still.”

“I’m getting Morita,” Dugan yelled, and didn’t wait for her permission to sprint out of the room. “Keep the case in here, it can’t get in now.”

He sprinted out of the room, his footfalls echoing as they receded. Bucky glanced over and saw the case lying near Peggy’s legs. Seeing it there, contained, stilled his nerves a bit.

Bucky grabbed her hand. She didn’t quite understand, still moving, trying to treat the wound. Bucky knew her well enough by now that he knew she wouldn’t stop trying until she really understood.

“I’m going to die,” Bucky said.

“You are _not_ going to die,” Peggy said. It was an order.

She tried to work on his makeshift bandage again, but he wouldn’t let go of her hand.

“I was always supposed to die,” Bucky mumbled.

“Perhaps, but not today,” she said.

Bucky laughed and then it felt like his belly was tearing open again. She stared down at him and was still, finally understanding that this was beyond her. Bucky’s skin was already sheet-white.

“Please hold on,” she whispered. “This place isn’t that big, Morita will be here in no time.”

“Don’t leave,” he said.

She pressed against the flowing wound with her hand.

“But if I can just--,” Peggy started.

“I don’t want to die alone,” Bucky said. His voice was even, calm. “Don’t--don’t--“

Peggy stopped. Her hand was still holding the wound, an illusion that if she just _tried_ there would be some way. He felt hot water drip on his face and he was so light-headed it took Bucky a moment to realize she was crying.

“I’m right here,” she whispered close to his ear.

“You know if you don’t take care of him, I’ll be a haunter,” he said through stuttering breath.

“Of course I will. We all will.”

“You tell that little--“

Bucky grunted, the words cut off by pain.

“Oh, Sergeant, if you use up your last moments in some macho--“

“No, you tell that pipsqueak I love him. You tell him.”

“Of course. Of course, of course. I will do that, Sergeant.”

“You know, you can call me Bucky. I think we can do that.”

“We can do that. I’d like that. Bucky?”

She shook him. He didn’t respond.

“ _Bucky_?”


	10. Chapter 10

**_ Steve _ **

 

**Bellevue State Hospital, New York--May, 1943**

He wished he had come up with the move on his own. He would have gotten there eventually, even if it weren’t for the little spark in the back of his head that showed him. His bishop could take Stein’s knight, and in two moves he could take the checker-king. It just hadn’t given him the peace of mind to come up with it.

Steve never described it as a voice in his head until other people did. They were just ideas, and they came from Somewhere Else. He’d had moments like that many times in his life. It was part of being artistic, he would explain. He could be on the train home from a Dodger’s game or a class or dinner, and then it would be there--something to paint or sketch, and he’d grab his moleskine out of his pocket. It was called inspiration. Inspiration always felt like it had come from some other place. But Steve knew this was different.

He moved his knight, snatched the bishop off the board. He wasn’t inspired to do that, but he agreed it was the best move.

Stein _tsk_ ed and rubbed a head full of salty hair.

“My boy,” he said in a voice thick with a German accent, always high like he was about to laugh. “This is the kind of nonsense that makes other people want to give you a black eye.”

A little puff of breath escaped Steve’s nose and the corners of his lips came up slightly, the closest to a laugh he’d had been able to make in two months.

“I can’t help it,” Steve said. “People are just so jealous of my good looks and charm.”

Stein stared at him over the thick frames of his glasses. Steve shuffled under that gaze. Stein chuckled, a little of the madhouse laugh in it, and sucked in air through his teeth as he considered the board. It was not chess, by any stretch of the imagination. Their ward in Bellevue didn’t have all the pieces. It was made up of whatever chess pieces they could find, a few checkers, and four Monopoly pieces.

“How is your little project coming along?” Stein asked.

Steve’s fingers wandered to the hard cover of his sketchbook and he tapped on it idly with his nails.

“Getting bigger every day,” Steve said.

“I think they’re keen to take that away from you,” Stein said. “Especially now that you’ve got that clever little cipher of yours.”

“They’re already stopping my mail. Makes me wonder what it is that’s keeping them from just taking it.”

“They want to know your mind just as badly as I do. They are just much ruder about it. May I?”

There was a little pang of worry in Steve’s chest but it dissolved when the old man looked at him with brown eyes that were full of intelligent sparkle. He handed it over and Stein took it with a soft grasp.

He opened the sketchbook and treated the new pages as delicately as a historian with a medieval manuscript.

Steve often wondered what people’s reactions really would be to the things he sketched out. Maybe they found it frightening, or confusing. Steve didn’t think about that when he was drawing. He just knew he had to get the thoughts down. The consideration of whether or not it made him sane or not came after.

“What is this?” Stein asked.

He turned it around to show Steve his own drawing, and Steve felt something wrench inside him.

“I don’t know yet,” Steve confessed.

Several versions of the same basic patterns, circles within circles, stars of protection, astrological modifiers, each section given its own specific function.

“It reminds me of the romans,” Stein said. “Legions of soldiers making walls of round shields.”

Steve’s eyes flicked up. He was going to ask how Stein had guessed that’s what it was meant to be, a shield for protection, when he heard the clack of shoes next to him.

“It’s time, gentlemen,” a nurse in white said, curtly.

Steve tried to smile through the grimace, but his discomfort couldn’t be held back. He nodded and she smiled back before coming around to everybody in the common room. He wanted to ask her, beg her, to please let him skip the medicine. But Steve knew none of the nurses were in charge of the pills, and Steve was always nice to the nurses.

Steve caught sight of one of them just as he was getting ready to rise. He flinched and looked down at the makeshift game.

_Do not look at him_ , Steve thought.

Trying to distract himself wasn’t helping. He had been in Bellevue for a few months, and nothing had changed. He had tried the exercises that the psychiatrist had given him. The medication only made him drowsy and filled the hours between sleep with sadness he couldn’t account for. Nothing had changed the fact that he was seeing a dead man in the games room.

The soldier’s head was cocked as he stared at Steve. Steve knew that nobody else in the room could see him. The soldiers were never like the other ghosts. Ghosts were almost always hateful, and they would come for Steve if it was too obvious he’d seen them and known what they were.

The soldiers were different. Not ghosts. _Spirits_.

He could never hear what they were saying, but there was a sound. It was like Steve was deep underwater, but someone was talking to him--sometimes even screaming. All he heard when they opened their mouths and pleaded was a water. Whatever they were saying would be lost, their words only manifesting as glugging, watery muteness.

The soldier held on to the belly wound that had killed him as he tried to get Steve to understand something.

“Don’t take them tonight,” Stein whispered as he got up.

When Stein crossed Steve’s eyeline, the soldier had disappeared.

Steve stood in the line with the rest of the patients in his ward. He was given a little cup and swallowed them in front of the dispensary. They were allowed another half-hour of relaxation before bed. So Steve came and sat next to Stein on the couch. Stein looked at him, and that’s when Steve spit three dissolving pills out into his hand and slid them under the couch cushions.

#

It was not a locked-room ward. Steve had heard about conditions in other floors, rumors that certain areas were more like a prison than a hospital. He didn’t know what he believed, so he let himself be grateful that he wasn’t in the midst of some penny dreadful.

Stein was waiting for him in the shadow of the nurse’s station. There were two of them talking idly in the booth, no idea that Stein was standing just inches from their kiosk.

Steve ducked low to get where Stein was. The old man motioned to follow and they moved towards the stairs.

“You plannin’ on getting me into some more trouble?” Steve asked, unable to help the smile on his face.

“This trouble would have found us eventually,” Stein said. “I hope you can help.”

“With what?”

Stein reached into his trousers, pulled out three keys. They were not on a ring.

“Where’d you get those?” Steve asked.

“You learn to pickpocket in difficult times, and Germany has seen its fair share. Perhaps you’d like me to show you a few tricks sometime?”

“ _Yeah_.”

“Good. Now come, it’s almost that time of night.”

It was three floors up, and they didn’t see anyone on the way there. They were silent as they ascended, keeping themselves low, relying on the Manhattan lights that came in through tall windows to show their way. When they opened the door to the floor three flights above them, Stein peeked in, surveyed, and then stood up and walked into what Steve then discovered was an empty ward.

“Where is everybody?” Steve asked. “I heard a nurse complaining about overcrowding just a few days ago. This floor could house a lot of people.”

“There isn’t much the hospital can do about an entire floor losing powers at all times of the day and night,” Stein said. “And the water won’t stay on, though they’ve fixed that a million times, too.”

“So why haven’t they fixed the pipes and wires?”

There was a noise like cracking glass, but no shatter. Steve jumped and stood straight.

“Because it’s not the plumbing or the wires,” Stein said. “And after the third patient death, the investigation shut this place down.”

“This is where you were staying before you came to my floor,” Steve guessed.

Stein didn’t have to say anything for Steve to know he was right.

They stepped forward and sometimes Steve swore it had gotten darker, the light going down like it was on a dimmer. But it wasn’t like the flickering which happens during power surges. It was slower, oppressive. A bright day muddied by the sudden appearance of a dark cloud.

“So, what are we doing here?” Steve asked.

“I need to know,” Stein said.

“Need to know what?”

“If your scribbles are real, or if you were very good at memorizing very odd books.”

Steve’s brows came together as he realized he was being tested.

“You said someone might need my help,” Steve said, his voice low.

“Someone definitely needs your help, but we’ll see if you can actually give it.”

There was another crack from behind them, sharp and loud. Splintering glass.

Steve was too petrified to turn around, he just stared at Stein. Stein was looking behind him, eyes searching. Steve breathed in then out in a huff and he made himself turn.

At first Steve thought it was a shadow and he looked around for the man that must have been casting it. But it was solid, the light going around it. It was hanging, suspended in the air, its feet not touching the ground.

It began to radiate dark in the shape of sunbeams through water.

A rush of panic went through Steve. He turned back to Stein, his face desperate, searching. Stein did nothing, but looked at him with high expectations. Steve heard the rush of air from the hallway.

Steve’s face became firm, determined.

_I can do this_ , he heard himself shout in his head.

He’d wanted to try, ever since the image appeared in his head. He’d thought he’d finally figured it out, the symbol, how to make it appear. It had begun as just a stray thought from this other place.

He could make it real.

Power surged through him and it was like standing in a beam of white-hot light that didn’t burn. That light moved through him, out of him and then it was there. The shadow bounced off his shield and flew off into the shadows, disappearing into them. Steve gritted his teeth as he peeked, opening eyes that had been wrenched shut against the impact.

The shadow was still there, menacing as its arms and legs became more like tentacles than limbs. Steve had another idea, and didn’t entertain thinking about it much before he did it.

He threw the shield in an overhanded arc and the disc hit it in the chest. The Shadow flew back into the depths of the hall and disappeared through a wall. The Shield became a whisp of light and shot back into Steve’s body. Steve stumbled to catch his feet, the force of the light coming back into him like a hard shove.

The shadow was gone.

Fluorescent lights began to flicker on above him. They ticked and blinked into life. Steve looked around in wonder as the oppressive, thick air lifted in the presence of light and the hum of electricity.

“Steve,” he heard Stein say from behind him.

He turned, and Stein smiled. It was relief he saw on the old man’s face.

“They’re called Shadow People,” Stein explained. “There’s mention of them across all cultures throughout the world. You may have seen them in your life. Some see them more than others. That sense that you saw something out of the corner of your eye, a black shape that spooked you in the middle of the night. Or if you’re like me, the form that hovers over you in sleep, paralyzing you as you try to wake, crushing the breath out of you. That is them.”

He’d avoided talking with Stein for so long when the old man had first come to his ward. Steve had been trying to get away from these ideas of monsters and ghosts, but this man had drawn him in, with games and with conversation. Then he learned of Stein’s affliction, the psychic drain he had experienced.

“It was attacking patients,” Steve said. “Did it attack you?”

Stein nodded, his face upset in his knowledge of how it would have happened to more people in that ward before they’d shut it down.

Stein spoke often of coming face-to-face with a demon. It had left him unwell, and erratic, a personality his family no longer wanted to have to wrestle with. It should have made Steve want to get away from him. Instead, he had spent the past month making a very good friend.

Steve had tried not to let Stein’s belief in the phenomena around him hinder his progress. But they had both seen it, this thing, the Shadow Man. It had attacked them both, and Steve’s scribbles had saved them both.

Steve had never been more grateful to be wrong about himself.

Standing in the empty hall, they both could say that what they had seen and felt was real. It had been coming for a long time, the stone of his doubt worn away by Stein’s encouragement. There was nothing wrong with him. What he’d been seeing was terrifying, but it was real.

He turned around, smiled as he looked at Stein. The smile fell away and turned to worry as he saw the gentle way in which Stein’s brows came together.

“Please,” Stein said. “My son. He needs our help.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Italy--October, 1944**

Jim Morita sat in a folding chair, his rifle up against the wall beside him, and his legs splayed in front of him. Steve would glance at him once and a while, but they weren’t talking.

Steve wanted to talk to him, but wasn’t sure how. There was no air of mystery and newness when it came to Morita’s abilities. If anything, Morita had looked bored the few times the paranormal had been the topic of conversation. Steve had wanted to talk to someone with a lot of wisdom to share for a long time, but just then Morita didn’t even look like he’d even share crackers with anybody.

Steve fiddled with the radio, listened for chatter, even though he knew Peggy had given the order for radio silence. He wondered about Bucky, why she needed him and what for.

“So who is this Baron Zemo guy, anyway?” Morita asked.

Steve’s head bobbed up and he turned to Morita, his eyes open and curious. Then they were wider when he realized it was a real question.

“Oh,” Steve said. “Yeah, he’s not exactly on the news reels.”

“Is he a real baron?” Morita asked. “What country even has barons?”

“There was a Baron Zemo that had an allotment of ancestral land, and he disappeared a decade ago. This could be him, could be somebody new, like an heir. We’re not sure. All we know is he’s the head of the Secret Empire.”

“So this Zemo guy just decided he wanted an empire?”

“I think the Empire was first. There are references to them as far back as the sixteenth century.”

“Well what the hell are they after? I mean, besides you.”

Steve struggled to put it all into a simple answer. The years on the run, avoiding spies and agents, fighting them in open combat and behind closed doors. The SPR and the Empire were both running after the same thing. But the truth was--

“I don’t know,” Steve said and smiled.

“So you were going to just enter a doorway that old, that messed up with bad juju, just so you could know?” Morita said.

“Yup.”

“I guess that’s one way to do it. You never thought to just catch one of them and ask?”

“We have. Couple of times.”

“And?”

“Cyanide capsules.”

“Oh.”

“We tried to bring them back, question them that way, but Monty’s abilities can only go so far. We can ask simple questions, like where they are positioned, or their names, or the names of their leaders. Plans, though? Philosophies? They can’t form those kinds of thoughts after they’re dead. Especially not ones made so fast. If they’re ghouls, and if they survive long enough, they become like people again. But with the way Monty does it--they always burn out.”

“Ghouls?” Morita asked.

“Yeah, dead people that--“

“I know what a ghoul is, I’ve read Weird Tales. So, uh--what else is out there?”

Steve watched the way Morita was leaning in now, actually looking at Steve with real interest. Steve’s smile was slight.

“There’s shadow people,” Steve said. “Or, at least one that I see every now and again. I think he’s got it out for me. I’ve seen ghosts. Especially--especially over here. Lots of ghost. Quite a few entities nobody’s been able to name. I draw them all, though, and write down what they do. Just in case someone can tell me someday.”

“Draw  ‘em?” Morita asked.

“Yeah. Here, just a sec.”

Steve reached into his coat, the puffy, overlarge thing seeming like it could hide a lot of things in a lot of pockets and never grow any bulkier. Steve pulled out a nearly football-shaped moleskine. There were loose leaves poking out, a side where ink had bled onto the rest of the pages, and there were pens and tools stuck inside. He handed it to Morita with no hesitation.

Morita flipped through the sketchbook. His face was grave, as he opened it. He glanced back up to Steve.

“You see these things wherever you go?” Morita asked. “And you got something talking to you in your head all the time? How are you not constantly screaming and running away?”

Steve just shrugged.

Morita laughed like someone had told a joke. Steve’s brows came together in a gentle furrow. He was just blinking, astonished and trying to understand.

“You know, I didn’t even see anything like this when I tried to open that door,” Morita said, holding up a gruesome drawing. “I didn’t see anything. It was light, really warm, actually, but I just had this feeling like if I went there it would be bad news. Gave me the heebie-jeebies the worst I ever had them, and I’ve been behind enemy lines. Ain’t never felt something like that. Never.”

“What do you usually use your ability for?” Steve asked.

“Ability. That’s a word for it.”

“You can tell me.”

Morita let himself lean back, crossed his arms as he put together his thoughts.

“I used to go through these gates in my mind,” Morita said. “They’d take me places, just _away_. What kid wouldn’t want to do that, right? I mean, you read books for the same reason--pretend you’re somewhere else. Except, I knew it was different than just getting out of my head. I really was away in these different places.”

“Sounds like something any kid would wanna do.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t use it for much of anything until I became a medic. I had this one guy, stomach wound, and he’d make it if he would just stop screaming, tearing his own damn body up when he was thrashing around. I wanted to send him away like I would go away, and it actually worked. He stopped screaming, we patched him up, got him to a real surgeon, and he’s got a kid on the way now and is livin’ in Deluth.”

“That’s amazing,” Steve said.

“Yeah, I know. Guy comes overseas, sees the things he’s seen, and he actually chooses to settle in Minnesota.”

“I mean it. I’m glad that’s what you use it for. There’s too much pain, not enough easing it.”

Morita shrugged.

“So what do you really want, Rogers?”

Steve blinked at the sudden change in tone.

“I don’t understand,” Steve said.

“You want to know what’s in your head,” Morita said. “You want to know what the Empire wants. It just doesn’t seem like enough for a guy like you. Why not just run and hide? That’s what I’d do.”

“You’re an enlisted man. You stayed in, even after-- A lot of things could have made you get out and stay out, and for good reason. You’re still here. I don’t think you’d run away from much. What you saw must have been worth being scared of. But you’re sticking around to take care of me. I think we probably both know.”

Morita closed his eyes, but the way his eyebrows rose, Steve could tell he was rolling his eyes behind the lids.

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

They shared a silence made for building reserve.

“It’s not a gate I’ve ever passed through,” Morita said. “I don’t think it’s like the usual ones. I think it’s the kind you go in and--and you’re not supposed to come back through it.”

“But you could guide me back,” Steve said. “You could keep the gate open and we could come back.”

“I don’t know. That’s the thing, I’ve never not known if I could come back. This time, yeah, I’m not so sure, kiddo.”

Steve smiled, but it didn’t hide it. Morita grimaced as he recognized disappointment.

“So,” Morita began. “What would be the worst that happened if this Zemo guy got a hold of whatever’s in your head?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “But I don’t want to find out.”

“How bad would it be?”

“I spent two days in a warehouse in Brooklyn with him. Him and his followers. I’ve been kicked in the teeth pretty much my whole life. There’s gotta be a “kick me” sign on my back that I can’t see. But I’ve never--I think he’s a sadist. I think he likes the hurting as much as he likes the power he gets from it. I’ve met a lot of bullies in my life, but this is--this is something different.”

Morita grimaced, and Steve could see him picturing it in his head, who this baron might be with power, the kind he’d seen rise before, the kind that had started the war.

There was a crackle and the radio by Morita’s feet came to life. Morita jumped out of his reverie and then relief flooded his face. He could think about normal things, like Nazis shooting at him, rather than the chills running up his spine.

“Go for Morita, over,” he said.

“Morita, this is Falsworth. We’re bugging out, over,” they heard Monty say over the airwaves.

“Send rendezvous coordinates, over,” Morita said.

Morita had his ear against the radio and that’s when Steve saw it. His eyes went wide as the Shadow Man manifested, tall and stooped, about to grab Morita.

In the next second Steve’s shield had appeared in his hand and he knocked the shadow back. Morita had fallen to the ground and when Steve turned to him, Morita was staring, astonished, at the appearance of the circle of light.

The shadow moved around the corners of the room, flicking between beams of light coming in through windows. Steve waited, watched the pattern as it tried to get back to Morita.

The shadow had been relying on patterns, and that was what allowed Steve to know where it would be. He ran forward, his shield in front of him, and pinned the shadow to the wall. The shadow was as solid as if it were a real person.

Steve needed more strength and a pattern appeared in his mind. Light surrounded his feet, and circled his biceps in spinning circlets. He could feel the shadow collapsing, cracking, like glass under pressure.

The shadow-man opened its eyes, if they were eyes. They were perfectly round discs, like peep-holes into someplace else. A screaming like nails against chalkboard nearly split open Steve’s skull.

The Shadow Man broke apart like exploding glass and scattered everywhere. The pieces of it disappeared in puffs of black fog. There were not even splinters of it left. It had been made from shadows and had returned to them.

“Well, that is unfortunate,” they heard from behind him.

A man in full German army field gear entered the room, his head covered in a purple hood, crowned in gold.

Steve manifested his shield again, held it in front of him to stand between Zemo and Morita. Morita had his rifle up, but more of the Empire soldiers filtered in.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend?” Zemo asked.

“You’re no friend of mine,” Steve spat.

Zemo reached up, and the sack slid off his head, after he had taken off his crown and handed it to an Empire soldier behind him. At the sight of Zemo’s once-warm brown eyes and a head of salty hair Steve felt like part of him had shattered.

“All that time in that hospital together, and we’re not friends?” asked the man who Steve had known as Gerold Stein.

Steve could only gawp, unable to make words form in his mouth.

He had been in the slaughterhouse with Zemo for two days, and Steve had never recognized the heavily-accented German voice being the same as Stein’s. Stein’s voice had been full of warmth, like a grandfather with his baby grandchildren. Zemo may have had his face, but that warmth was absent. It terrified Steve that it had never existed at all. A lie that Steve should have seen.

Steve’s face turned into a furious glare. He threw the shield and Zemo ducked out of the way, throwing something at him as he did. Steve felt a shock go through his body, the air knocked out of his lungs. He hit the floor, darkness taking him.

#

When Steve’s eyes flitted open, he felt like there was an axe lodged in his brain. The first thing he saw was Morita, unconscious, mouth slack and a bruise appearing on the side of his face. Steve tried to lift himself up, but he found his hands could not move. He looked down and saw there were black lines drawn on his hands. He recognized the binding spell and knew it would be near-impossible to break.

He looked up and around. Six statues in a circle, light cast inside of the room to illuminate the white walls. He was in the chamber.

_If you’re there_ , Steve thought. _Help me_.

Footsteps by his feet and he looked up just in time to see a boot come down onto his face. Steve shouted loud enough that Morita jerked awake.

Zemo lowered himself down so he could hover over Steve. He tried to recognize his old friend in that face, but he was missing--the warmth of the dark, brown eyes, the easy laugh. He didn’t know this man.

“You were never Stein,” Steve said.

“There was a man named Stein,” Zemo said. “That was really his son you tried to help. But he died in late April, with the others I sent the Shadow Man to kill, and I took his place when I knew you were in that hospital. That silly gambler doesn’t even know his father is buried under the Hudson. It wasn’t difficult to be him. You Americans lock away anything that gives you the least amount of trouble. You barely check to see if you’re putting away the right person.”

“Yeah, and Nazis do so much better.”

Zemo took his finger and pressed the tip into Steve’s chest. Steve had to grit through it. It was just a finger, but it was up against skin and bone, hitting some nerve that shot pain through his body.

“Do you know why I did it?” Zemo asked. “Why I took the place of a sick, stupid man just to watch you for a month?”

“Was it because of my good looks and charm?” Steve said through a grimace.

“I have been looking for this power all my life. I wanted to know what made you worthy of it, why it was just handed to you, what made this little, obscure man capable of what I have been trying to achieve my entire life.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

Zemo leaned forward and even more weight was pressed down on his finger. Steve had to suppress the sound that eked out of his throat.

“A runt like you should never have been given the power you have been handed,” Zemo said. “I’ve wanted to kick your teeth in since I met you. I wanted to know this man, this man who was touched. But then you were _this_. In a right world, you would have been left on a stoop to die, not gone on to live and steal divine light from those of us who seek it for ourselves. Sick little weak man.”

He turned his finger and Steve gritted his teeth, refusing to shout or whine.

“Give it a rest, buddy,” Morita said.

_No, don’t_ , Steve thought, but afraid to say it unless a shout of pain came out with it.

Zemo cocked his head like an eagle and glared at Morita.

“The only reason you are alive is if our process fails,” Zemo said. “And I will murder you the moment you step out of line.”

The absence of pain was so profound after Zemo took his finger away that Steve gasped in a breath of air.

Steve remembered the warehouse in Brooklyn. For two days, he didn’t eat, and had been given water only after his lips were cracking and they needed to keep him going for just a little while longer. He remembered them hurting him every time he said no--nothing he wasn’t too used to. But then things were different. Then Zemo took a personal interest in his level of pain.

He remembered them painting his back and the way he felt like the landscape inside him change. He had been out of sync with the world during their ritual. He had slid out of existence the more they demanded he be their “conduit.” They had wanted him to say yes, to scare him into submission.

He hadn’t given in then, and he wasn’t planning on giving in there either. But he still remembered the way they had tried to force it the first time, inside the ritual circle in the slaughterhouse. Steve remembered the presence fill his body where memory should have been, before he blinked back awake to find himself being dragged through the Brooklyn streets at night and shoved into a cab.

Zemo wasn’t planning on being gentle with him. He hadn’t been gentle before, and nothing would be different this time.

Zemo grabbed him by his bound arms, arms that he could not make break apart no matter how much he struggled. The stone floor scraped his skin as Zemo dragged him to the pit, dropping him in with less delicacy than if he were a sack of luggage.

Steve looked down and saw that the floor of the pit had changed. It had been drawn on with chalk, intricate symbols crossing over each other. He recognized it as a ley line amplifier, combined with the arcane symbols of summoning.

There was a reason they had dismissed this technique when trying to use this place. Entering somewhere else, even not knowing what was beyond the door, would be safer. He would be traveling in spirit, a certain amount of safety weighed against lesser risk.

But this way, summoning, bringing whatever the voice was to their plane--if he was truly used as a conduit, Steve knew what would happen to him. He wouldn’t survive, and the Empire had whatever it was that was speaking to him from somewhere else.

“Please, help me,” Steve muttered, words not meant for anybody in the room.

“No one is going to help you,” Zemo said, a voice seething with bile.

The others of Zemo’s cult stepped forward, their purple hoods bowing as they reached their hands into the circle. It was like they were at prayer, but Steve knew what it was. He’d seen it before, in the slaughterhouse; a summoning ritual.

Every time Steve had summoned his shield or funneled any of that power, what rushed through him felt like every nice, warm day lying in the grass or sunning on a rooftop. It was the feeling of a heart filled with contentment and peace.

But not that time.

As they hummed and spoke the words in a language Steve didn’t know, it was there, the same presence of light and power. But when forced, being pulled through him, summoned, it was pain so intense that his breathing stopped completely. He tried to breathe out, the air choking him like a hand around his throat. The white light behind his eyes was blinding.

It was coming out of him, the thing he had spent the last year trying to find, to meet. Steve had wanted to do it in its own plane of existence. He hadn’t wanted this, to force it to manifest, to tear himself up in the process.

It was inside of his skin, and he felt it like fingertips clawing at him, as it tried to stay in its realm.

_I don’t want to do this to you, I didn’t want this, I didn’t mean to do this to you_ , Steve chanted over and over in his head as he felt it panic inside him like a frightened bird.

#

_He was back in his Brooklyn apartment. His mom was working at the hospital and didn’t know that Bucky was staying over. When she would wander home at five in the morning to find them sleeping on the couch cushions on the floor, she wouldn’t say anything._

_But they had a problem._

_“What if it’s got diseases?” Bucky said as he flinched away from the fluttering pigeon that had flown in through the window._

_“It’s just a bird,” Steve said._

_“It’s a rat with wings.”_

_“Maybe we should get somebody.”_

_Maybe they should’ve. They were just fourteen, shouldn’t have been touching wild animals, even if it was a pigeon and there were a million of them in the city. But Steve came over to the panicking animal and put both hands around it. It was so scared that it crapped on the kitchen floor, but it was still in his hands._

_“Open the window,” Steve said._

_Bucky ran over, held the sliding window up and Steve ran over. By the time Steve put his hands close to the window, the pigeon was already flying away._

_“Yuck,” Bucky said._

_“It just wanted to be let out,” Steve said._

#

_Let it out_.

Steve screamed as he was torn open.

#

White light. Nothing but the light. Steve’s hands were over his eyes.

_Don’t look_.

The voice asking him, a plea of mercy. It knew Steve wanted to meet it, but it begged.

_Not now. You will burn_.

_I can handle it_ , Steve thought.

_Not this time_.

#

Steve came around and saw the stone floor, the white lines stretching out around him. Not just the lines, but the bodies. Purple-robed bodies. All dead. Steve knew, because the voice had known. His hands were no longer bound and he pushed himself up off the ground.

Not all dead.

One of them was stirring on the floor, and Steve trembled as Zemo struggled to rise. The baron cried out in pain as he pushed against the floor. Zemo reached up, grabbed his mask. He tugged once and yelped. Then screamed and screamed as he tried to rip his hood off his face.

Zemo turned to Steve, and through the eye holes in the hood, he could see what had happened. His skin was discolored, his eyes red and bleeding. The fabric edges were weaved into the flesh under his eyes.

Steve felt sick pity in his stomach as he realized what had happened.

Zemo couldn’t take the hood off. It was melded to his face.

Zemo rose and Steve tried to back away, but every muscle in his body felt like it had been used for hard labor for hours without rest. Even his fingers were stiff as wood.

A shot rang out and Steve flinched and ducked. When he looked back up, Zemo was clutching his chest. Morita was holding a gun up in a shaking arm when Steve did a quick turn to look. By the time he turned back, Zemo was already in the shadows of the stairway and disappeared. Morita took a few more shaky shots for good measure, but none of them hit before he was gone.

Morita limped over, holding his head like he’d been clanged over the skull with a baseball bat.

“You okay, kiddo?” Morita asked as he reached down. Steve grabbed his arm, pulled himself up with each muscle screaming.

“I’m fine,” Steve lied.

“What the hell was that? Something was comin’ out of you. I thought you were gonna split in half.”

“I don’t know. Damn it. Damn it, I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?”

“Open the door.”

Morita stared at him and met Steve’s glare.

“You can’t,” Morita said. “Did you see what happened to these guys?”

“In twenty minutes Dernier is going to set off the explosions that will destroy this place for good. The mission was always _if we can’t use this place, we won’t let the Empire_. We have to destroy it. Jim. Please. This is my last chance. It’s my only chance.”

#

Steve was standing next to Morita and for a second he thought he was just in fog. They moved forward and his eyes widened. His breath hitched and pulled in and with that reaction he realized that he wasn’t breathing. He didn’t have to. He didn’t have a body.

They were in a forest. It was lush and thick. He could feel the moisture in the air, hear wind rustling the leaves. Then there it was, the gate. It was a perfectly square, straight-edged gate. He thought perhaps a gate would look ornate, special. But it was smooth and sharp.

“Morita?” Steve asked. “Is that gate red?”

“Yeah,” Morita said. “Why, is that significant or something?”

“No, I’ve just--I’ve never seen red before.”

He’d never seen green, either. The red gate in front of the forest stirred in him something he had never been able to reach before.

“Well,” Morita said, hitching himself up. “It’s now or never, buddy.”

“Never isn’t an option,” Steve said.

They walked through.

There was no forest as they passed through the gate. There was the feeling like going up stairs, but he couldn’t see his feet. And then a plateau and they looked around.

“Anybody home?” Steve said.

He’d spoken low, but it echoed long and loud.

And then it was there.

Steve felt a jolt go through him as he took in what he was seeing. Steve thought, at first, he saw the outline of a man. The fog cleared and he saw the form better, and it stood with its feet planted, wrapped in gossamer clothes, skin dark. Then he saw the wings. They were onyx black, and they almost looked mechanical, but made of workings of a machine that couldn’t exist in the physical world.

He could not see its face. It had shielded that from Steve’s view, and in that moment Steve understood why. He remembered speaking to his priests at his church in depth, wondering why angels always told people in the Bible the same thing.

It spoke.

“ _Be not afraid_.”

“Holy crap,” Morita muttered next to him.

Steve didn’t have to ask, or make any guesses. He knew. The little whispers of inspiration from somewhere else, they were the whispers of this angel.

An angel. A real angel, and nothing like the stained glass images of people with soft wings, haloed and benevolent. He understood, somehow, that as it appeared to him now, it was the best manifestation an unknowable could make of itself. It made sense to Steve why he wouldn’t have survived the sight of it in his world.

He had so many questions but all that blurted out of his mouth was:

“Why?”

The angel cocked its head, and although he couldn’t see its face, he still read confusion.

“I mean--,” Steve barely got his stuttering under control. “Why did you tell me all those things? Why did you give me the shield? Why did you make me see the dead? Why?”

“I was meant to protect you,” the angel said.

“You--you’re my guardian angel?”

“The rest I wasn’t supposed to do.”

Steve’s face was bitten by confusion.

“Weren’t supposed to do what?” Steve demanded to know.

“I was meant to be a guard only,” the angel explained. “To keep you alive, until you became what we needed you to be. I was to give you the gifts you can use to protect yourself and do your work. But I see your heart, Steven Rogers. I saw why the darkness comes to you, why it surrounds you, tries to pull you into its depths. I could not leave you without protection, should the rest of us fall.”

Steve braced. He was scared. Not like he was scared while staring at the barrel of a gun. It was the fear of disappointing.

“I know you want to tell me, so I’ll ask,” Steve said. “Why did all those things come after me? Why the Empire, too?”

“Because you are good,” it said. “And they must mock that which reflects how base they truly are. That is the nature of the daemoniac.”

“But the soldiers?”

“You know those spirits are different. They sensed you could help them, for they felt the same goodness.”

There was no other way to feel about an angel saying that you were good but to feel like you were tumbling slowly, with no worry about an impact at the end of the fall.

“But--why couldn’t you just tell me you were the one helping me?”

“We are meeting now in an even plane. I am diminished, and you are elevated. Hearing me would have burned you, like the servants of Zemo.”

“So that’s why it feels like--“

“Inspiration. If I spoke, you would be mad, as you thought perhaps you were.”

“How come you chose to protect me? There are other people that see them, but they don’t get a shield.”

“I did not choose. Zazael tasked me with your protection.”

Steve remembered the man dressed as a security guard, his voice bubbling back to life, bloodied eyes staring at him.

_He belongs to Zazael_ , the dead man had said.

“Who is that?” Steve asked. “What do they want with me?”

“You weren’t meant to die. You have already been told this. You have not been told all. You were meant to do something great, be greater than yourself, a symbol. Zazael needed that man. But you died.”

“But I came back. Bucky, he got me breathing again. That happens to people all the time.”

“That is not what happened.”

“Then tell me.”

The angel cocked its head, unfamiliar with the sort of desperation it was hearing. With the way it lifted its head, it seemed to come to an understanding.

“That man who loves you--James--Zazael came to him,” the angel said. “He couldn’t simply bring you back. We must obey certain laws, and we have no source of life to dole out. But if he could give life to you, it would have to come from somewhere else, and he does not have the power to take it from anywhere. Except, perhaps, if it is offered from another source.”

“Bucky--,” Steve whispered. “What did he do? I still don’t understand. Please.”

“James traded his remaining years for you. Whatever life you have left has been taken from his years. He had some time to spend, but it has expired. He is meant to die today.”

Dread rolled through Steve, a vibrating drum beat that was deep and would never stop shaking his skin.

He imagined Bucky alone, enlisting for a war after not hearing from his best friend for months. He remembered the past few months, even as they were together, Bucky pulling away sometimes when Steve was being his most affectionate, something suddenly wrong with touching. He pictured every time when he had sworn Bucky was going to say something important. He had then seen those thoughts float away like the seeds of an Irish daisy. They were always replaced by words like _I just love ya, dumbass_.

“ _No_ ,” Steve whispered, and in the hollow plane, it echoed.

The plane world shook, one violent jerk, but enough of a shock that it was like being punched in the head. They had to take a moment to get their bearings. Even after the shaking had stopped, Steve had no hold on anything.

“You must leave, now,” the angel commanded.

“Good idea,” Morita said.

“Bucky--I gotta get to Bucky--,” Steve mumbled.

“I give you this task,” the angel said. “Find me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If Zemo is able to pull me out of you and claim me for his own, you will be destroyed, and Zazael will not have all he needs to defeat the coming darkness. I won’t remember who I am when you discover me again. Only find me, and I will be your ally.”

“Where?” Steve asked.

“You will know me.”

And then Morita had his card held in front of them.

#

Steve screamed when he came back into his own world. Being ripped from that place and put back rather than the gentle walk it had been to get there was a shock as bad as being dropped into ice-cold water.   He was on the ground, curled into a ball as all his breath was ripped from his lungs and he struggled to pull it back in.

“Sorry,” Morita said, rushing over and doing a quick medical check as Steve writhed on the floor. “Quick exits are a pain.”

“Good lord,” Monty said.

They both looked up to see Monty standing in the doorway of the chamber, coming forward. “What happened here?”

“You didn’t think to check the place for secret entrances?” Morita yelled.

“Of course we did,” Monty snapped back. “It must have been something not documented in our research. We would have been here faster, but Dugan and I have been holding them back. Rogers, are you alright?”

“Bucky,” Steve said and struggled to get up.

Morita and Monty tried to hold him down, not to hold him back, but to keep him from flailing too much.

“He’s with Agent Carter,” Monty said. “Why, what’s wrong? My god, did you actually go through the door? What did you see? What--?”

Dugan rushed down the stairs.

“Morita,” Dugan said. “We’ve got a wounded man been waiting too long, get your ass in gear.”

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve said one more time and wrenched himself away, rushing out of the room.

Dugan was about to go after him, but Morita grabbed him by the jacket sleeve.

“Don’t,” Morita said. “You don’t wanna stop him.”

The ruin had never felt large until he had to get to the other side of it. Steve rushed through too fast for someone with flat feet ought to have been going. He couldn’t stop searching, had to look down every hallway.

He saw Peggy standing close to Gabe as he turned a corner near the south end of the castle and rushed up to them. When she turned he skidded to a stop, his breath hot and coming out in nearly uncontrollable gasps.

He saw it in her face, and in the blood on her hand and sleeve.

“ _No_ ,” he whispered, already couldn’t see through a haze of fear. “Where is he?”

“Steve,” Peggy said and her voice was breaking.

He looked past her, saw an open gate, nothing but darkness inside. He knew. He sprinted forward.

Gabe caught him and held him, even as his legs were kicking underneath him. Then Peggy was there, the firmness of her arms around him, the smell of her shampoo just as real as the hold she and Gabe had on him.

“I don’t want you to see him like this,” Peggy said.

“Let me go,” Steve demanded.

“Let us clean him up. He deserves that dignity. We can take care of him. We’ll let you see him, but not right now, alright? Not now.”

He felt one of her tears hit his face. He felt his own break out, and they were so much hotter than hers had been. They seemed to fill his face up, and the struggle to keep them inside made him shake so hard he could see the vibration in the tips of his hair.

Gabe and Peggy steered him away, and he kept looking back, sure he’d see Bucky walk out, each step filled with a swagger and his bowed lips turned up in a wicked smile.

“ _You can’t get rid of me that easy_ ,” was something Steve imagined Bucky would say.

Then Steve felt the hollowness of certainty.

He knew Bucky had died. No part of him could even idly imagine a world in which Bucky Barnes had not died. Every moment he’d ever spent with Bucky, every moment of friendship, and every moment spent being in love with him was stitched into his skin. He felt those stitches tear out of him, and they took muscle and bone when they went.


	12. Chapter 12

Steve missed everything. The explosion that took down the ruin, the escape, the battle between the Empire and the Allied troops as they covered their escape. They had ushered Steve into the back of a truck that was hidden inside a supply convoy. Morita was looking after him, Falsworth their escort in case of a tricky tactical situation.

They’d been traveling for five minutes when they heard the explosion. They had gotten so far from it, it might as well have been a sound effect coming over the radio.

Steve was grateful that both Morita and Monty didn’t say anything when he couldn’t stop crying.

It was ugly. He was pink in the face, his muscles ticking, and he would sniffle and choke when he tried to breathe.

Exhaustion hit him, and he was too tired to carry on. He was emptied. He rolled down onto the bed of the truck, but he couldn’t sleep until he asked.

“Has Peggy called on the radio yet?” Steve asked, hating the strain in his voice.

“Nothing,” Monty said. “There’s a rendezvous point, we’re going there.”

“How long?”

“An hour, at least, if the roads are clear.”

“I can’t--I can’t keep my eyes open.”

“You have permission to shut them, Captain.”

#

_Steve woke up with a jolt. It was a shiver from the cold. Bucky’s arm was draped over him, but they’d fallen away from each other in sleep. Steve remembered that Bucky had tossed aside his sweater. Steve reached over Bucky’s sleeping form and hung over the side of the bed to retrieve the large, patterned knit the Finnish soldier had given Bucky. He let it drop over his head, slipping inside it easily._

_Bucky snaked his arm around Steve as he came back up, murmuring as he exited slumber._

_Bucky’s blinks were slow as he came around, and his eyes found Steve. There was a wonder in them, like Bucky thought he was dreaming. Steve saw the moment when Bucky realized he wasn’t, and would never forget the smile that came after._

_“Sorry,” Steve said with a laugh that shook in his nose. “I got cold.”_

_Steve tried to adjust to the sweater. It had been big on Bucky, so Steve was trying to push the sleeves up in an attempt to get it to fit him. He hadn’t been self-conscious about it until he caught Bucky suppressing a smile._

_Steve wondered if Bucky looked at him like that all the time, and he’d never seen. Bucky was good at hiding that kind of thing, knew exactly when to turn away from a girl so she didn’t see him smiling._

_He nuzzled into Bucky, and they both wrapped the thin army-issue blanket around them. He inhaled the smell of him, was going to fall back asleep._

_“Did it hurt?” Bucky asked in his ear. “Being dead.”_

_He’d asked through a haze of half-dreaming. It was an odd question, but it was an odd night._

_“No,” Steve said. “I didn’t notice, if it did.”_

#

Steve woke up with his face buried in tough cloth. He smelled Bucky, and he lifted his head. He had a moment after he began to stir, deciding he’d look for him, let him know he dreamed about that night.

His blood went cold as he remembered.

His heart seemed not to want to pump blood through his body. The tough fabric he was laying his head on was Bucky’s peacoat. They’d grabbed everything, the footlockers, weapons, their gear, anything that wasn’t tied down, and thrown it in the back of trucks. Steve didn’t even remember finding it.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know what to do.”

Steve recognized Morita’s voice.

“You helped Rogers and you didn’t have to,” Monty replied. “It was damn brave. I remember how scared you were.”

“Well, I’ve been a medic for a year now. It wouldn’t feel right. And thanks for, you know, following me that first time. I mean--I know it wasn’t like I seemed to appreciate it then, but I--“

“Don’t mention it. Really. It was the least I could do. Sometimes we forget that we’re a top-secret division for a reason.”

“What happens now?”

“Now, I think we’ll have you sign some confidentiality paperwork and you can go back to soldiering. That should be a nice return to normality.”

“What if I, uh--what if I don’t want to go back?”

“Corporal, are you volunteering? That’s a dangerous statement to make.”

Steve wanted to laugh when he heard the smile in Monty’s voice. He might have if he didn’t feel like any ability to laugh was buried under rubble.

Steve didn’t want to be angry. It didn’t change that he was.

He was angry at Monty and Morita. He was angry with somebody he didn’t know brushing their teeth and listening to the radio. He was angry with a war that was still going on miles and miles around them. Didn’t anybody know? Didn’t they all know the world was never going to be normal ever again? Why didn’t they just _stop_? Why didn’t they just give Bucky a moment?

Steve sat up. Monty and Morita were silent as soon as he made his presence known. He looked at them from under heavy brows. He wanted to ask them why they were talking about anything like it mattered at all.

“How far out are we?” Steve asked.

His voice had come out through a throat that was thick with sorrow. He sniffed and wiped his face.

“We’re still thirty minutes out,” Monty replied.

“How long was I asleep?”

“Two hours.”

Steve felt like he’d missed years. He also knew that two hours of travel meant the road had been harder, likely cut off by enemy forces.

Morita was digging around in his pack and he pulled out a canteen. He held it out for Steve to take.

“I’m not thirsty,” Steve said.

“Drink anyway,” Morita said. “Doctor’s orders.”

The water felt rough as it went down his throat. Somehow, even water didn’t taste right. He took two long pulls at their request and it sat heavy in his belly as if it were spoiled milk.

He caught the glance that Morita gave Monty. He was begging Monty for help. Steve had forgotten Morita was a stranger. Just a few hours before, Monty had told them he wanted nothing to do with them. Morita didn’t owe them anything. But Jim was still there, and he was looking for food by the way he was digging around in the supplies.

“I don’t want to eat anything,” Steve said.

“Tough,” Morita responded.

In the half-hour it took for them to return to the base, Steve had managed to eat half of one RTE.

Steve peered between the canvas surrounding the truck-bed and saw they had passed through a gate made of two of Dugan’s sentry devices. The machines were making a low humming noise that meant they were idling. Dugan called them Gatekeepers, and they always hummed with a strange frequency, and they were shaped like a pair of metal claws coming out of pillars.

Steve dropped out of the back of the truck like a sack of grain, despite both Morita and Monty holding their hands out to help lower him. The fact that he was wearing Bucky’s coat and the too-long sleeves kept him from having any good hold on the back of the truck hadn’t helped.

He saw her. He kicked himself when he realized the first thing he noticed was how red her lips were. He wasn’t in that other world anymore, but there it was: red on her lips.

It was almost like falling. He was wrapped around Peggy’s arms within seconds and she whispered comfort in his ear, but he couldn’t understand them just then. Steve wanted to cry again, the threat of it building against his skull.

“I want to see him,” Steve whispered.

#

Peggy and Gabe stood at the entrance to the tent. Steve said he wanted to be alone, but that’s where they stayed.

They hadn’t had time to do much, but he was given as much dignity as could be afforded in the middle of a war zone. His torso was washed and he was laid out, at rest, a single dog tag on his chest. The blanket they had found to cover him was lowered only down to the collar. Steve hadn’t yet seen the wound that had killed him. But he saw the blackness that had consumed his left arm, creeping up onto his shoulder.

Bucky could have been asleep. His face was relaxed, his mouth open slightly, and Steve expected to see him pull breath in between those lips, and then snort, annoyed, to roll over and get more comfortable in his bed.

Bucky wasn’t in his bed. He was on a stretcher.

Steve had been told there would be a period of time where he couldn’t believe in death, that it would take time to accept. But Steve already knew he was looking at a corpse.

Peggy asked him not to, but he pulled the blanket back anyway. He looked at the wound. He took a moment to stare at it. He placed the blanket back. His face was more contorted as he tried to hide what was happening inside him than if would have been if he had just let it show.

Steve turned his head away, and that’s when he saw it. He seethed as he knew what was inside of that case. Peggy had finally told him about the malachite, and Bucky’s idea to keep knowledge of it from Steve. He didn’t know what the stone was, but he hated it.

“We’re already in contact with the base nearby,” Peggy said. “He’ll be flown to France tomorrow.”

Steve stalked out of the tent. He walked. He would not stop walking. He walked the way they taught him to in army training. _Walk like you’re trying to get somewhere_.

He didn’t know where he was when he finally stopped, but he saw he was surrounded by trees. The forests in Northern Italy could be as easy to get lost in as the ones in Germany. He wondered if he just kept walking he’d get lost enough. He had the idea that just maybe everybody would forget about him.

He stopped at the edge of the camp when he saw them. The soldiers.

They were wandering, their eyes staring far ahead. He knew they were dead. He wasn’t altogether sure they knew they were dead. They were wandering towards him.

One of the soldiers stopped. He knew Steve was watching him. He prepared for the glare of the ghost. The angry, hateful glare that held the bitterness the restless dead held for the living.

They didn’t glare. They pleaded. They started talking, the watery sound.

“What do you want from me?” Steve yelled.

One of the soldier’s helmets was covered in netting and was tilted to the side, and he wore a scarf around his neck. It was red. Steve could see it on the spirit, too. Beyond the veil there was still red.

The soldiers turned away. They wandered on, westward. They were not angry, only sad. Of all the wandering ones that were angry, it was almost never the soldiers.

He remembered why he’d agreed to enlist in the SPR, besides the task of stopping the Empire. These men. He’d wanted to help them. They’d come to him, somehow finding him across an ocean, and they’d begged him. Steve hadn’t forgotten. He just knew in that moment that he hadn’t done enough.

He’d searched countless ruins, infiltrated Empire bases, trying to find out why these men were suffering after death and how to put them to rest. They still hadn’t found a damn thing, but Steve had felt the need to go after the door, to find out about himself first.

_What was the point_? Steve asked himself.

Steve laced his fingers together and put his palms on the top of his head, pressed down on his own skull as his head bowed. He felt the unreleased scream build up in the back of his throat.

Peggy’s perfume.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Bucky did it for me,” Steve said. “Why did he do it?”

“No, Steve. He was protecting me. If anything--“

“He made a deal. He gave his time to me. I’m supposed to be dead. I should be dead. I should be dead and Bucky should be alive.”

It spilled out of him, the whole story. Going through the door before the palace was destroyed, seeing the angel, the entity that was the source of the inspiration which filled his countless moleskins. It had told him about Bucky selling his time before the angel disappeared to be beyond Zemo’s grasp, and to hide from the wrath of Zazael.

And he told her what he’d even been afraid to say to anyone, even himself.

For the first time since nineteen forty-three, is mind was quiet.

It was not that the angel had been noisy. It was that it had been ever-present, and participated in the way he thought. He was alone in his head for the first time in years.

“What if I’m not even the conduit anymore?” Steve asked.

“You could try,” Peggy encouraged. “Test yourself.”

“I don’t think I could do it now, even--even if he hadn’t--“

“Don’t do it to yourself, then.”

She was close, had her hand on his shoulder, rubbing it in soothing circles. He bowed his head and she cupped his cheek, smoothing it with her thumb. He’d thought he didn’t want to be touched. But after feeling her hand he realized he needed it, and couldn’t figure out why.

“I’m going to find him,” Steve said, his voice low.

“Let us worry about Zemo,” Peggy replied.

“I mean Zazael. I’m going to find him, and I’m going to make him tell me what the hell was so important he had to make the deal he did.”

“Steve,” she said.

“He had no right to make that deal with Bucky. No right at all.”

“ _Steve_.”

The sharpness in her voice made his eyes flick up to meet hers. Her face was stern as it was met with the clarity of Steve’s anger. That anger marred what was always, to her, a sweet face, and it was hardened with persistence. She sighed as she realized what she was seeing.

“Don’t do anything without us,” Peggy pleaded.

“I can take care of this by myself,” Steve said. “I know what I’m doing, and I’m not risking losing anybody else.”

“And what are we supposed to do if we lose you?”

Steve’s eyes fluttered in confusion and his reserve softened. He opened his mouth to speak, but it made a few attempts before he could get it out.

“Peggy, I can’t go through this again,” he said.

“What are we to each other, Steve? You and I? And all of us?”

Steve’s mouth hung open, but the word would not come out.

“ _Family_ ,” Peggy finished for him with a nod.

He didn’t think about it, he just did it. He grabbed her waist and pulled himself into her, held her as fast as she did in return. They embraced under the autumn Italian sky, darkened by evening and the echoing of the distant war.

“Please don’t leave us now,” she whispered, close to his ear, her arms firm around his shoulders, so much stronger than the grip he had around her ribs.

“I won’t,” Steve said.

“You won’t?” she teased.

“I promise. You know I don’t break my promises.”

“It is, possibly, the worst of your flaws.”

Steve inhaled the scent of the old leather of her bomber jacket, and knew he was about to sob.

Then they heard a hum that vibrated the ground they stood on--the hum of Dugan’s machines being activated. They pulled away from each other. Confusion and terror dried up tears and silenced his coming cries, especially when he looked up and saw the determination on Peggy’s face as she realized what was happening. She ran, and he ran after.

“How did they find us?” Peggy yelled as she came back into the camp proper. “They’re behind our lines.”

“I don’t think the Empire cares much about boundaries anymore,” Monty said, meeting her as she came forward.

“They’ve riled up my machines,” Dugan said. “They got something bigger than tanks.”

At the front of the camp, the claw-like sentries were alive with electricity. Steve had seen Tesla at an expo when he was very young. He’d never seen Dugan’s machines actually fired up, and the gun and the gate were alive with the same kind of terrifying magic as the powerful displays of machinery that had fascinated him as a kid.

“Does anybody want to explain to me what the hell that is for?” Morita said, pointing to the sentries.

Morita’s question was answered when they saw the first spark at the perimeter. It was a crackle and a boom, as blue electricity sparked. It was too quick at first, but then they all saw another spark.

They were assaulting the perimeter with ghouls.

“What the hell do they think they’re doing?” Dugan asked. “No way in hell can ghouls get past my machines. So what the hell are they tryin’?”

“I don’t like it,” Monty said. “They know where we are, they’re throwing ghouls at us despite their inefficiency, and we can’t leave while they’re out there. Other than starving us out, there’s no soundness to this.”

“Unless it’s a distraction,” Morita chimed in.

Monty turned, eyes sharp as he looked at a Morita. Something showed behind that look, an admiration mixed with something quieter.

“He’s right,” Monty said. “They want us to think the ghouls are our problem. They’re not. Zemo’s forces have only been able to resurrect a few, and they’re useless against Dugan’s fields. They know this. Whatever they’re doing, it’s already happening inside the perimeter. Check every tent, check everywhere.”

Each of them parted and took a different path. They’d told Steve to check their munitions, and he began to rush towards the tent--

And then he stopped. Something ran through him, a familiar chill. It was instinct, intuition, and he felt the fingertips of the angel’s usual gentle nudging in it, even though he knew it wasn’t the angel. He didn’t go to the munitions tent. He was drawn in and entered the dark of the tent they were using as a temporary morgue.

The light that came through the flap of the tent barely lit up the dimness of the space, but that was all he needed to see by. His heart felt like it had dropped out of his body, clunking onto the floor. He rushed inside and approached the slab where Bucky’s body was supposed to be.

He laid his hand over the empty stretcher, the only one in the tent.

When he heard the shuffle from behind, the instinct was automatic. His shield appeared and he moved to block whatever was behind him. Around the edge of the glowing disc he saw black fingers. The Shadow Man’s fingers. They burned and hissed where they grabbed the light, and white smoke sizzled out from the edges.

He shoved back and it hit as solidly as if the Shadow Man were flesh and blood. He lowered his shield to look at it, to see how it would attack this time. But he was too slow. It ran into him and Steve barreled backwards, landed on his spine.

He froze. The light from the shield he’d willed into existence dimmed to almost nothing.

It was Bucky.

It was him in every angle of bone. It was the upturn of his bowed mouth. It was the stubble he had grown that day. And the lines, every line, he had developed sleeping on his face both in his own bed and in the dirt ground of Europe. But his eyes--

Bucky’s eyes were almost glowing, an unnatural, crisp blue like fluorescent lights. And the way he was looking at Steve--no look that predatory would have come out of Bucky’s eyes.

Steve, for once, wished for bitterness. He wished for hopelessness. But it was there, the glimmer of something that still illuminated the room, made the shadows of Bucky’s face dance and flicker in the hum of the light of his shield. He knew it would hurt, and he wouldn’t recover. But he had to. He had to hope. He had to try.

“Bucky?” he whispered just before the blackened hand grasped him around the throat.

Nothing. It squeezed.

Steve’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as he choked on the air still in his lungs, unable to get any more. Light dimmed as he felt his shield disintegrate into barely a whisper of light.

And then behind his eyes, he saw the color. Red. His vision was so red he thought his eyes were filling with blood. His teeth gritted and then he felt it build inside of him.

The light in the room was blinding.

He was barely aware of what he’d done. He’d hit Bucky hard enough that he was knocked across the room. Steve forced himself back up, and he and looked down to see a ring of red in the shield where before it had only been a disc of white.

He looked over to Bucky, but Bucky’s eyes weren’t focused on him. Bucky rushed away, too fast for Steve to catch up to, too fast to be human. Steve tried to meet him halfway, but when he threw the shield, Bucky had already ducked, with his prize.

Bucky’s hands were around the case, and the seals glowed with a strange green light at his touch. The wards Dugan had placed on the case were shaking, and Bucky’s black hand was smoking again where it touched the lead handle. By the look on Bucky’s face, it hurt like hell. Whatever the pain was, it didn’t matter to Bucky. He had the case and he took it, sprinting out of the tent.

“Bucky!” Steve cried as he ran after.

The others saw him and were powerless to do anything. They could barely comprehend the sight of their late friend running at breakneck speed, and in the time it took for Bucky to rip open one of Dugan’s machines with his left hand, pull out a piece of wiring that deactivated them, they had just begun to collect themselves to aim their weapons.

Steve pulled his shield back, was ready to throw it.

Bucky looked right at him. Nothing that looked out of that face looked anything like Bucky. But it was his face.

He felt glass shatter in his chest. He tried to force himself to throw it, but instead a cry like an animal tearing itself out of a trap escaped his mouth. The shield disappeared as he lost his will to throw it. It was too late to try again as Bucky disappeared into the trees.

Bucky was gone, and so was the stone.

Steve held himself up with shaking arms, knees planted in the dirt.


	13. Chapter 13

“They have a necromancer.”

Monty’s words reverberated in the stillness that followed. No one in the tent would say anything. In the low lamplight of the battery-powered lantern, the only thing illuminating the tent, none of them would look at Steve. Steve wouldn’t have noticed if they had, his vision drifting far away. He knew they were wondering if he was even there with them.

Steve was there. He heard every word. He was going to be sick if he heard any more.

“How powerful would he have to be to create a ghoul without touch?” Peggy asked.

“I don’t know,” Monty continued. “Powerful. My experience with other necromancers is, ah--limited. But I know that’s not something easily done.”

“What would happen if a necromancer had that stone?” Steve asked.

There was a pause. None of them had expected him to speak. They turned to him. When he looked back at them, his eyes were level and calm.

“I--I’m not sure,” Monty said.

“We need to _be_ sure,” Steve said. “We might be a little more sure if I’d have known the real reason we were in that ruin was to get that stone. I may have even been able to ask the angel.”

“We--,” Monty began.

“Don’t. I don’t want to hear it. I want to know what Zemo would want with that thing. I want to know what it does.”

They all shifted uncomfortably, sharing a look. All but Morita, who glanced at them with a fair amount of anger and was listening carefully.

“When you brought back that book from the palace in Russia, it made mention of a stone,” Peggy explained. “When we knew the Empire was in Italy, and made a guess that they would be after it. They must have found a reference to it somewhere else. They had no reason to be in the area otherwise. When we saw the book also mentioned a veil thin enough to open the door, like the one Morita was capable of opening, the opportunity presented itself to accomplish two tasks.”

“Why not tell him about both?” Morita jumped in.

“It was Barnes’--it was Bucky’s idea,” Peggy finished.

The confusion bit Steve’s face with the sharpness of a pinprick. He started to form his mouth around the word “why?” but Peggy had anticipated it.

“He wanted to protect you,” she said. “You always see such horrible things. The things in this stone are supposed to be so old, so ancient, that it’s on par with what Dugan saw.”

“Trust me,” Dugan said, a shiver going through his body. “Buck was lookin’ out for you.”

“You survived,” Steve pointed out.

“You don’t know what that took, kid,” he continued. “It’d take everything right outta you. I’m only talkin’ to you now  ‘cause I got a big old hole in my memory the size of Rhode Island. And besides, the Sarge didn’t want you to use it.”

“What did he think I was going to use the stone for?” Steve asked.

“He said it would make you desperate,” Peggy said. “I don’t know what he meant then, but maybe I do now. He insisted we find it, and then bury it. Put it someplace so deep and dark it would never be recovered. He at least had the right notion about that.”

“What does it do?”

“According to what I’ve read,” Gabe said. “It collects souls. A lot of the ones already collected in it are more ancient than we can imagine.”

“Imagine what the Empire could do with that,” Peggy said. “Imagine how many empty bodies they could make. Ghouls that never recover memories, who keep marching, and are put back in the ground once war is done.”

“Now try to think what would happen if Zemo could take the ancient souls out of the stone and put them in the empty bodies,” Gabe finished.

Steve collected himself. He was imagining it. The dead walking through Europe in a wave, most without memory, but some filled with ancient intelligence. There was no buffer anymore between the concept and Steve’s grasp of it. It was nothing he had to wrap his head around--it was an eventuality.

Steve thought of the soldiers. The spirits that had come to him, and the way he couldn’t hear their words, but they were begging him. He’d seen them in his dreams, on the train, in his room at the hospital--soldiers begging for help.

Steve realized with terrible clarity they’d been the souls forced out of their bodies by whatever necromancer Zemo had already been working with. They were preparing them to become vessels, and that meant tearing out their souls.

“How do we get the stone back?” Steve asked. “Because I’m not gonna stand around and wait for the Empire to learn how to use it.”

“Who’s their necromancer?” Morita cut in.

“Why?” Monty asked, genuinely curious.

“I mean, if they don’t have a necromancer, they can’t use that thing. Who else could use it? No one, right?”

“Not without considerable difficulty.”

“So get the necromancer.”

Steve looked at Morita, his heart jumping at the soundness of the plan. He look to each of them in turn and he saw the agreement in their eyes.

After the day they’d had, it was pure relief to know exactly what to do.

“How do we find him?” Steve asked, voice even, all business.

“<I may have an idea>,” Dernier said.

They all turned to the normally quiet Frenchman sitting in the back. His face was strangely passive, like what he was about to suggest was a gentle thought exercise to be discussed over lunch.

#

**Austria--November, 1944**

“<It looks like snow>,” Dernier said.

Dernier was right; it would likely snow. Steve could smell it in the air. Steve remembered snow smelling different back home. In New York, the purity of the snow was piercing through soot and dirt made up of the grime of millions, and there was a wonderful snap of purity that would become slush and mud in a few days. In the mountains, it was like putting ice in water that was already clean and cold. They were near the Alps, sand the snow-capped peaks of the mountings were heavy with snow. Hovering clouds threatened to blanket the valleys below in white.

“Hannibal had to cut through that with vinegar,” Gabe said. “Somehow, Frenchie came up with a crazier plan.”

They’d left their reserve troops behind, the plan better with the small company. A seven-person team travelling into Austria through the woods after coming over the Alps was the kind of stealth Steve was used to, sneaking in and grabbing artifacts.

Kidnapping a necromancer was not quite like taking a stone or a book, but Steve had some familiarity with the setup.

Austria was green, even after autumn, and the part they travelled through was unspoiled. The landscape was dotted with old homes and stone castles. He’d thought that Disney had made most of it up when he’d seen Snow White for the first time, fallen in love with the beauty of those castles and little cottages in the woods.

Whenever they had a resting stop, he drew the architecture. For once he was able to dot his sketches with blots of reds, greens, and purples. Hues that were new to him filled a book that had just been black smears of ink. He liked looking at work that made him feel something other than dread and the need to work.

“Better than the usual ghouls and gore,” Gabe said.

Steve looked up from his spot, sitting on a stone as he was drawing an abandoned farm. Gabe was leaning over Steve’s shoulder to watch him put down a stroke of red ink. It was from a pen that was supposed to be for Peggy’s official documents.

“Yeah,” Steve said, his smile straining. “It’s a little bit of a break.”

“It’s almost like you haven’t seen anything since the ruin,” Gabe said.

Steve looked up, his eyes flicking towards the copse of trees near where they were sitting and eating lunch. The woman in white was weeping under the tree. Her weeping was violent, convulsive, her face clutched in her hands. One eye was uncovered and it was wide, dark, and wild.

“I guess there’s not much to see around here,” Steve lied.

Gabe was looking exactly where Steve had glanced. Steve knew Gabe didn’t see things. That didn’t mean Gabe couldn’t read what was happening around him. He knew there was something there.

Gabe put his hand roughly on Steve’s shoulder. Steve pulled himself together enough that he could look at someone else. Gabe nodded. Steve nodded back. He gave Steve’s shoulder a squeeze and walked away.

Two days into the hike, they heard the first reports of Zemo’s new army. It was only a few dozen ghouls so far, but only a handful of resurrected prisoners of war marching against Allied forces had done a lot of damage. The Allied forces had only managed to destroy one ghoul with fire, because the commanders wouldn’t believe the advice from a division called the SPR they’d never heard of before. They certainly didn’t believe that the only way to kill them was with fire any more than they believed that what they were fighting were reanimated corpses.

Peggy’s advice to them after that was less about fighting ghouls and more about rumor containment. But they could tell that word was starting to spread when they reached Allies and spies in villages and manors, and they asked them if it were true, if the Nazis had really raised the dead. They wouldn’t let Steve say anything. With him, they would be able to tell it wasn’t propaganda.

They reached their destination within another couple of days. At the sight of the Empire base, all seven of them had to take a moment. He planted his feet, leveled his eyes, and physically swallowed like it would suppress his unease.

The tower peaked out of the trees and Steve’s visions of Snow White and Cinderella’s castles were removed from the vision he had so far of Austria.

The tower was made of black stone. It was affixed to a cliff face and half of it was a spire that rose beyond the height of the natural mountain. It was an audacious building, unnatural. It relied on the idea that mountains don’t move, that rain doesn’t wash away, that wind doesn’t buffer. It was as precarious and flimsy as a newly formed idea, but less grounded. Steve shivered.

“Well, that’s stubborn,” Morita said.

“That’s one word for it,” Monty agreed, a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips.

“If you were to say that an army of ghouls was coming out of somewhere, that’s what I’d picture,” Gabe said.

Dernier was looking through binoculars as he stood on a rock. He lowered them and turned back, shouted at Gabe. Gabe shouted back and they both shrugged before nodding in agreement.

“It’s time,” Peggy said. “Are you ready?”

Steve turned to her, his chest rising and then falling in the single breath it took to build resolve. He nodded.

#

Steve had gotten used to the idea that he might get shot. There wasn’t much he could do about it, so worrying was pointless.

He was a small figure, pale and thin as he came before the great, black gate, stepping lightly on the dark ground that seemed to have been lately burned. The already-dark stone at the base of the castle had been licked with fire, enough to make the dark grey stone turn into charcoal black.

He walked forward with raised hands. Two soldiers came forward, leading with their rifles, shouting for him to get on his knees. Three more joined them out of the guard hut. Steve was already getting onto his knees, but he was kicked on the back of legs and he dropped, the bone of his right knee hitting a stone. He wouldn’t let himself flinch at that pain, or the pain of them grabbing his arms to hold behind him as they bound his wrists.

#

The soldiers wore the purple of the Empire. None of their Nazi regalia remained. There were no SS, no swastikas, no skulls or crosses. They wore uniforms of royal purple, and symbols of earth and energy taken from ancient Nordic runes sewn into their clothing. Knowing full well they seemed not to know the purpose of the symbols they wore made Steve want to roll his eyes, but he simply stared ahead.

They were bringing him directly to the necromancer’s laboratory.

It smelled like death. Steve had the reflex to gag, but he swallowed it, the muscles around his nose and mouth tightening. He saw specimens on tables that would have made the researchers in the SPR have fits about their various states of rot. A few table lamps and the sunlight from a few small windows the only sources of light, and Steve wondered how anybody could work in that room.

Steve was sure that what he saw next would kill him. He didn’t know he would survive it until he did.

Bucky sat in a chair, his eyes forward, gaze unseeing. He had no shirt, and his left arm, still black as onyx, was draped over a shelf. Steve had never seen such disconnected slackness in that face before. If Bucky were aware Steve was in the room, it was no different than if he had noticed the presence of a fly.

A small man stood over the arm. He was lifted up on a footstool, bent over and so concentrated on his work that the guards who brought Steve had to announce themselves. The small man straightened and turned around, blinking, as if he were surprised the world outside existed. Steve could barely see him, beady eyes big as a bug’s when refracted through a field of three lenses the only thing visible behind his headgear.

Steve looked past the small man for a moment, at the long needles connected to wires that were placed in the flesh of Bucky’s arm.  

The man removed the goggles he wore, stepped down off the stool. He replaced his odd spectacles with round bottle glasses.

“Well, this is unexpected,” the necromancer said. “What opportunity.”

“Where’s Zemo?” Steve asked.

“Occupied elsewhere. I will try to entertain you for as long as I can. Here, sit. I think it is almost time for lunch. Oh, is that the time? It’s well past the time for lunch. You must be starving.”

The necromancer turned back, taking the needles out of Bucky’s arm. Bucky rolled out of the chair lazily and mechanically grabbed a shirt to put back on, but only after the man had gestured to it. Bucky understood orders at least.

“Sit, sit,” the necromancer pleaded, eager to entertain.

Steve sat at a relatively clean, small table, set far away from the window. Since the sun didn’t reach them, the table was illuminated by a small lamp. Steve’s eyes never left Bucky, who peered back at him, but with the kind of familiarity reserved for someone he might have seen in pictures. All the while, the necromancer puttered around his laboratory, preparing to eat lunch with a guest.

The meal was all vegetarian, fresh greens with sprouts and warm beans, steamed carrots and peas, with strong black tea to drink. Steve didn’t touch it, and wouldn’t have, even if the smell of the food were tempting to him. As it was, mingling with the smell of whatever was rotting in that lab, it wasn’t tempting in the least.

“You don’t eat meat?” Steve asked.

“Not anymore,” the man said.

“Do you know who I am?”

“The boy who was touched by angels. Of course I know who you are.”

“Why don’t you tell me who you are? That’d make us even.”

“Doctor Arnim Zola. And you’re Steve Rogers.”

Zola’s hands were very small and clever, like the busy hands of a hamster. He nibbled on a bright yellow steamed carrot.

Steve’s eyes flicked right and he saw Bucky watching Zola eat. It was like he was trying to understand why anybody would do such a strange thing.

Steve’s brow furrowed further and he could feel a burn build behind his face. He knew he was going to be red if he wasn’t already. He squared his shoulders, his thin chest rising and then settling.

“You have been watching him,” Zola pointed out. “This is a fascinating process. Do you see how he tries to comprehend what should be familiar? I have done several dissections on new ghouls but found nothing that would impede memory retrieval in those with intact brain matter.”

“How did you do it?” Steve asked.

“Do what?”

“How did you resurrect him without touch?”

“Who on earth said I did that? Oh. That amateur in your jolly gang. I know him by reputation only. Ours is a very small community. If you want someone dedicated to The Art I am more than willing to give a few recommendations.”

“We’re fine.”

Zola nodded, contemplated for a few seconds as he chewed a piece of broccoli. He looked over at Bucky, who had tilted his head like he was listening for something.

“It’s extraordinary to me that the man which occupied this body previously had the predilection of enjoying being sodomized,” Zola said.

Steve tried not to inhale too loud as his body tensed. He would try not to let Zola see how the skin around his eyes had tightened. Zola turned back to him.

“It was you who sodomized him, was it not?” Zola finished. “Regularly. You were  ‘lovers.’”

Steve knew he hadn’t been able to make his expression neutral when he saw the satisfied look on the small man’s face. Zola shrugged.

“It is strange to think that this happens so much among the Allied forces, but there’s no accounting for taste,” Zola said, taking in another piece of broccoli. “You have the idea that you are here to regain your beloved from a tower. A fairy tale. So to speak.”

“I’m leaving here with Bucky,” Steve said. “And with what I came here for.”

“I’d like to show you something,” Zola said.

He gestured not only for Steve to wait, but for Bucky to come forward. Bucky had no curiosity or eagerness as he came and sat in a chair that Zola pulled out next to Steve, yet Bucky was quick to obey.

Steve tried to keep himself steady. To have Bucky so close and not be able even to reach out and grab his arm was worse than whatever tortures he thought they were going to pull out in the dungeons.

Then it was anger he had to keep at bay.

Zola was able to grab Bucky’s head and jaw with ease. Bucky knew automatically what Zola wanted, and his mouth opened to the explorations of a probing finger. Zola had not even bothered to put on gloves, as a doctor would. Zola pulled the lip back to reveal Bucky’s gums. Steve had seen the same act done by a cart driver in the borough, showing how his horse was ailing and couldn’t pull a cart anymore.

Steve’s urge to leap across the distance between him and Zola and pummel him into the ground was near impossible to resist. Disgust went through him like a wave and Steve finally reacted under the pressure of it, swallowing his breath and pulling back into the chair.

“This is a fascinating development,” Zola said. “Do you see how the change is spreading?”

And Steve could see what he meant. There was black seeping into his gums where they met under the lip, and when Zola urged Bucky to open his jaw, there was black coming up the tongue, like Bucky was leaking ink from inside his throat.

Dread, already sitting heavy in his chest, somehow became weightier.

Steve didn’t know if that was normal for a ghoul. He’d studied so much before he’d gone into the field, but this was a hole in his knowledge. He would have to wait for Monty to look, but Steve could tell by how fascinated Zola was that this wasn’t what usually happened.

Zola let go of Bucky’s face and wiped off his hands with a pristine, white napkin. Steve watched Bucky for a reaction, some sign he felt anything about being handled. Bucky actually stared back at him with some interest, his eyes that same too-light blue, even in the dimness of the room. But there was still no recognition.

_Please_ , Steve mouthed at him before Zola turned back around.

Bucky’s brow came together sharply.

“Do you think you will gain him back?” Zola asked. “That you will nudge his memory just the right way and you will both live happily somehow?”

“Yup,” Steve said, eyes tightening.

“That was very confident.”

“Just being honest.”

“How will you save him then, when both of you are dead?”

Zola snapped his fingers and Bucky grabbed a handful of Steve’s collar. If Bucky recognized it as the collar of his old peacoat, he didn’t show it. Steve was dragged out of the chair and his knees hit the flagstone floor.

“You could have shot me when I got here,” Steve said.

“Yes, but then I wouldn’t know how my test subject would react to something from a previous life,” Zola pointed out.

“So you set up an experiment. How did you know I was coming?”

“Of all the things you put into place for your seven-man invasion, did you really not think that espionage would come into play? Each side has their spies, Sergeant Rogers. My, you’ve not touched your tea at all.”

Zola grasped the delicate cup, his fingers only lightly holding the rim. He brought it down, held it level with Steve’s face. The room was still. Steve was expected to take it, so he did. He did not drink, only held it in his hands by the base.

“What are you going to do?” Steve demanded.

“The value of prisoners of war has increased,” Zola explained. “Doesn’t every soldier dream of their death having meaning? Now imagine a soldier able to fight beyond death, without the fear that accompanies them into battle. No retraining, no needing to replace them when their bodies are used up. It will begin with hundreds, and then thousands. We will be unstoppable.”

“You don’t get to decide what a soldier fights for.”

“You truly are as Zemo said. Weak of health, weak of mind. But perhaps your body will be useful for study. All of us who practice The Art have the desire to transcend death. What you have done to help find the Soul Gem is something I will be forever grateful for. But now that we know that Zemo cannot bring forth and capture the angel, your body will not even be useful to me beyond dissection. I cannot give you the gift of eternal life.”

“I’m real broken up about that.”

“It’s no matter. In the east there are bloodlands. An inexhaustible source of bodies. They are taken out of the race, their weak wills gone. We will stand, Sergeant, masters of humanity. The bloodletting was already began by the Soviets. Now the process only needs refinement. In this war, there will always be more bodies. And they will be more useful to humanity this way than if they were allowed to continue breeding.”

Steve could barely contain the fury which vibrated under his skin. Zola was talking about some far-away place, but Steve had been there. He would not forget, so long as he could remember, and dream.

“You know why you’re going to lose?” Steve asked.

“Please, enlighten me,” Zola said, his expression bored.

“Because you think people need to be mastered.”

“They do.”

“You also think it’s possible. It’s not. It was never supposed to be that way.”

Steve heard it, what he’d been waiting for: bootfalls as someone ran through the hall outside. One of the Empire’s soldiers burst in through the door as if he’d been propelled like shrapnel.

“What is it?” Zola snapped in his impatience.

“It’s the dungeons, Doctor Zola,” said the soldier. “We began to clear it for new prisoners, as you said. The entire base of the tower--“

“ _Spit it out_.”

“Dynamite. Every corner is laced with dynamite.”

Zola turned a sharp glare at Steve, who smiled with a tilted mouth and bright eyes.

“How did those commandos get inside our walls?” Zola demanded, his fury going to the soldier instead.

“That’s the trouble,” the soldier said. “They’re still at the treeline. We don’t know when they planted the explosives. We can’t find the detonator and there’s too much to clear it in time. We have to evacuate.”

Zola gnashed his teeth before calming himself, pacing as he tried to think.

“You really thought espionage wouldn’t come into play?” Steve said. “That’s what happens when you know about the seven coming for you and you don’t pay attention to the one already here.”

“Who?” Zola shouted.

Steve just smiled, eyes flashing.

“ _Kill him, now_ ,” Zola ordered.

Steve felt a hand on his neck, as smooth and cold as satin in winter but as unyielding as metal.

Steve was pulled into the air and tossed across the room. He slid across the flagstone until he hit the wall, his body curved in to keep the impact from knocking him out. The shock of the pain went through him, but he gritted down on it, punched the ground with his knuckles so he could pretend the pain was in one spot. He looked back and saw the shattered remains of Zola’s teacup in puddles of hot water.

Bucky was striding towards him. He looked past him, at Zola.

He felt the warmth of energy course through him. He’d had doubts, was not sure he could do this after the weeks of mourning, of low, blue moods, of hopelessness.

The shield was bright with white and brilliant red as it appeared in his arm. He rose on one knee, threw it in an arc, and it moved past Bucky. He saw the edge of it on a direct path to Zola’s throat.

A flash, green and purple, filled the room. The shield was called back to Steve’s arm. He hissed when he caught it. Something was different. It hadn’t just bounced back, it had been rebuffed.

The symbols of the ward that had protected Zola faded like an after-image burned into the back of eyelids. He could still see the dark energy coursing like a current of electricity through familiar symbols. They were demonic. Steve remembered Gabe and Dernier telling him the difference between the spells they were to use, and the corrupted ones they must never consider. Zola grinned, for he saw that Steve knew full well the source of his power.

Steve knew what he had done to gain that kind of control over that force. A dread and disgust weighed his stomach down as knowledge mingled with the smell in the laboratory.

There was no way that Steve and Dernier’s agent could smuggle Zola out of that tower. Not with what Zola had done.

“ _Finish it_ ,” Zola hissed.

Steve had no time to think. A fist was coming at him. The energy between Bucky’s arm and Steve’s shield crackled when they connected, a puff of black smoke appearing after the impact. Steve pulled away and saw that Bucky’s arm had changed. It was filled with cracks that glowed green, striations breaking up what was once an arm of solid black. It looked like it would hurt, but Bucky only glared forward, a single purpose in his eyes.

Steve looked past Bucky and saw Zola march away through a back entrance, disappearing. But Zola never broke eye contact as he stomped away. Steve was being glared at by a man with plans. It was the last glance he had of the necromancer before Bucky charged.

Steve braced himself as he hit Bucky with the shield, the power in his arms pulsing so he could knock him back. Bucky skidded across the room, rolling over. He began to claw back up, but was still scrambling and skidding like a newborn fawn.

Steve turned to the Empire soldier standing in the room. They locked eyes.

“Have I got the green light to go ahead, Captain?” the soldier asked. His German had disappeared and he spoke in a strong French accent.

Steve smiled but for only a second.

“Go,” Steve said. “And you know, I’m not really a captain.”

“Understood, captain.”

There was a bit of joy in the smile that Dernier’s _RÃ©sistance_ spy gave just then. He might not be able to help Steve capture the necromancer, but the explosion would be reward enough. The spy rushed away to set the charges.

He had been smiling for the spy’s sake, but it disappeared when he left. His face pulled into a grimace as he shielded himself from anther charge that Bucky had leveled against him.

“Bucky, _stop_ ,” Steve pleaded.

Bucky was grabbing the edge of the shield. Bucky was trying to tug it away with the impatience of a child, black smoke rising from his left hand. Steve twisted and Bucky twisted with it.

He didn’t want to do it, but he willed his fist to glow with a white light and he punched Bucky on the jaw to get him to fall back.

They fought, and with every hit he landed on Bucky, Steve could feel parts of himself breaking off. He didn’t want to do this, but it was working, so he didn’t stop. The more frustrated Bucky became, and the more Steve hurt him, the less control Bucky seemed to have. They were going further and further back into the room, Steve leading him like they were in a dance. Soon enough Steve was standing in the light of the only tall window in the room, the sunlight beyond dulled by the clouds of coming winter.

He kicked Bucky in the shin. It had the desired effect. Bucky recoiled and then rolled his head as he glared at Steve. It had hurt enough. He was angry enough.

_Please_ , thought Steve.

Bucky charged again, and Steve was glad this appeared to be his only tactic. Instead of blocking him, Steve opened his arms, allowed Bucky to barrel into his chest. The momentum of the charge coupled with Steve running backwards gave them enough force to propel them out the window.

He curled into Bucky as they fell. Of all the times that Steve could have felt hope after all that had happened, it came to him. Hope filled him even as he plummeted, his stomach not seeming to be travelling with him. His shield flashed bright and as he closed his eyes he could swear he saw the glow of something new.

The shock of landing reverberated like a gong. His vision was white and the world didn’t come back into existence until he had blinked enough. The shield disappeared and he sunk into soft, cool, wet grass. He breathed into the ground, tasting the dirt underneath. He’d had attacks in his body where he couldn’t move, his muscles seizing, his lungs refusing to breathe. It was a bit like that. Nothing new, he told himself as his muscles seized.

_Get up, Rogers_ , he chastised himself.

And then hands on him, clawing, tearing. His vision was still a haze, but he knew it couldn’t be anything but Bucky still trying to kill him. He had no wind in him and couldn’t even tell him to stop. He could only eke out the groan of every muscle in his body straining, and the desperation of the fright of the relentless attack.

And then it stopped. There was a noise, like breath trying to escape through a chokehold. Steve opened his eyes only degrees at a time.

Bucky’s face was fraught with terrified confusion. He was frozen. And then he was lifting up, slow and calm, but straining like his body was out of his control. Because it wasn’t in his control.

“Easy,” he heard Monty’s voice. “Easy there, friend.”

Another terrified noise from inside Bucky’s throat.

Monty’s hand was hovering close to Bucky’s body, but not touching it. From the look on Monty’s face, he was not comfortable with this action, wished he didn’t have to use this part of himself, at least not for this. Every motion, every word was about calming Bucky, easing the process.

“That was a hell of a thing,” he heard Morita say as he approached, covering their exit as he pointed the gun from the direction the Empire would be evacuating from.

“But it worked,” Steve said, grunting as he found his feet.

“How often do you do crap like that?”

“That was the first time for that one.”

“By which he means all the time,” Monty finished. “The necromancer?”

“I’ll explain later. Let’s get out of here.”


	14. Chapter 14

Bucky watched the tower crumble, along with Steve and the rest of the commandos. They were gathered on a hill, shielded by trees so as not to reveal their position.

The foundation rocketed out with the force of the dynamite _the_ _Résistance_ agent had planted. The stubborn tower broke free of its desperate clinging and fell, becoming a pile of dark rocks and nothing more. They could see the Empire’s soldiers retreating, their vehicles speeding away, and they knew their agent was still with them and would be able to feed them information. Zola had gone another way. They had seen his odd, black car taking a road further into the mountains.

Steve would try several times to draw what the destruction looked like within the pages of his moleskine, the image playing over and over in his dreams many times.

Steve turned to Bucky and saw the way he stared, curious, with eyes that were full of echoing hollowness. Something was still not quite right. His stare was not quite ghoulish, but not human either. When Bucky turned around, Steve felt ice in his veins. He steeled himself, smiled in the hope that the gesture might help. When Bucky smiled back and it was full of an odd joy at the sight of the destruction. A knot inside Steve was pulled tighter.

The first snowflakes of November fell into Bucky’s dark hair.

#

Bucky was as obedient and passive with Monty as he had been for Zola.

Monty was much kinder in ways which would never have entered Zola’s mind to consider. He sat Bucky down in a comfortable wingback chair that happened to be in the drawing room of the house they had stopped in. The Swiss family that lived there had opened it for Allied spies, and it was the first comfortable place Steve had stayed in for months.

Utilizing his gifts was never anything Steve asked Monty to do lightly. It was delicate for everyone in the room, including the corpse.

“I want you to know you’re not in any danger here,” Monty reassured Bucky in a soft voice, leaning over as if he were speaking to a small child.

Bucky blinks were laconic, and he gave one small nod.

“I’m going to come over and I’m going to look at your body,” Monty continued. “I am not attacking you. But I need to look at you.”

Bucky did not nod or try to say a word of agreement. Instead, Bucky offered himself for study. The way Bucky leaned back in the chair, his body language opening, but his head to the side so his gaze was averted, placed an unsettling nausea in Steve’s stomach.

Monty opened Bucky’s shirt and looked at his chest. The wound that had killed him was still in his stomach, a deep pock-mark of flesh. Then Monty raised his hand to Bucky’s head, inspected his scalp and the length of his hair. He then gathered Bucky’s hands in his, looking under the nails. He dropped the right arm and inspected the blackened left arm. The flesh was still cracked, like it was made of dozens of interlocking parts, but the green glow had disappeared from it. Monty’s fingers travelled lightly over the surface, and Steve knew he was feeling the cool, silken texture of it. Then he lifted his hands to Bucky’s face, made him face forward, and pulled up the lids to get a better look at his eyes. He slowly nudged Bucky jaw so that Bucky would open his mouth. Monty peered at the black inside his throat, which was seeping up his tongue.

Then he laid his hand on Bucky’s head, closed his eyes like a priest giving a blessing.

Monty thanked Bucky, who seemed confused at the gesture, before he walked out of the room. Steve took one last glance at Bucky before he followed Monty into the hallway. Gabe and Peggy stayed in the room to look after Bucky.

Monty rubbed his face and then removed his hat so his fingers could travel through his short, fair hair.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asked.

“That isn’t a ghoul,” Monty said.

Steve’s eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean?” Steve asked.

“His wound is healing,” Monty pointed out. “I don’t know how, but--if he were a ghoul, the wounds that killed him would never heal. They’d be open forever. Ghouls don’t change. They fade, eventually. You’ve seen it. They fall apart, but they don’t decay and they certainly don’t heal. That body is healing, and in ways I can’t account for. Moreover, his body is changing. His hair has grown since he  ‘died’. And contrary to popular belief, that simply doesn’t happen to dead bodies.”

“Then what is he? Is--is that even Bucky?”

The way Monty sighed and steeled himself gave Steve the answer, but he still tried to hope. He would hope, right until the moment the words were spoken.

“I don’t think he’s in there,” Monty confirmed. “Not even Bucky’s old memories. I would set my life on the assumption that Bucky’s corpse is possessed.”

Steve hated that he already knew. Bucky’s body was hosting something. He imagined it clinging to the bones of Bucky’s body and steering it around like he was made of nothing but levers and gears.

Not his body. His corpse.

The image Steve had held onto, the one that meant Bucky could be back, even as a ghoul struggling to regain memories, was gone. It dropped and broke so completely that Steve would never try to even pick up the pieces again. A piece of china so broken as to be disintegrated into fine porcelain powder had better chance of repair.

Steve had to let it fall, to break. There was no other option.

“Okay,” Steve said. “So what do we do now?”

“Are you alright, Steve?” Monty asked, pointed.

“It’s done. What do we do now?”

“Steve, you’re shaking. Maybe now is not the time for plans.”

“I need to know what we’re doing next. We lost Zola. So somebody needs to start thinking about how to track Zemo down before this goes further.”

Monty knocked his hat absently against his leg. Steve was going to demand more answers, but then Monty let out a profound sigh.

“Stick with the rest of the plan,” Monty said.

“How?” Steve asked, narrowing his eyes.

“If we want to find Zemo and the stone, we need to know where they are, just as you said. The thing that is inside Bucky’s body will work better than if we’d gotten even just a little bit of Bucky’s will and memory back. What we have now is better than one of Howard Stark’s homing beacons.”

“What do we have?”

“Steve, I think perhaps you should be prepared for this. It’s not easy for me to say--Steve, Bucky’s corpse is possessed by some kind of dark entity. It may be the same one that hunted you. The same--“

“The same one that killed Bucky.”

“ _Steve_ \--,” Monty warned.

Red in his vision again.

Steve had already turned and was marching back into the drawing room, the door making such a bang when it opened that both Gabe and Peggy jumped. He crossed the room in long, determined strides to stand in front of the thing that looked like Bucky.

“Don’t look at me like you don’t know me,” Steve snapped.

It was paying attention, eyes wide. Then confusion again, head cocked.

“Where is Bucky?” Steve demanded. “Where is he? Is he dead? Did you take him? Did Zemo? Did Zazael?”

“What’s going on?” Gabe asked Monty when he followed to stand behind Steve.

“You got no right to be in there, you hear me?” Steve continued.

“It would be just a fraction of the Shadow,” Monty said. “It likely doesn’t remember, if it’s him. It may be just a shard of him, whatever got left behind and broke off when Bucky grabbed him.”

The way the Shadow Man recoiled helped Steve believe him, but there was still a hot suspicion, that this thing was still playing with him, hunting him, on Zemo’s orders. But the way his mouth hung open, slack, matching the lack of understanding in his eyes, lit up a compassionate spark inside of Steve. He tried to douse it with as much hate as he could muster.

He settled down. He couldn’t be angry at something that pitiful. Steve discovered that the only thing that was making him angry was his inability to hate it. He couldn’t hate this thing. It had killed Bucky, and he couldn’t hate it. He was keeping all that anger for himself.

“Track Zemo down with him,” Steve said. “Finish the mission. Then get it out. I want to bury my friend.”

The Shadow Man’s distressed gaze followed Steve as he marched out of the room, along with everyone else’s. If they called after him, Steve didn’t hear. All he heard was the rush of blood in his ears. His head felt like it was being pressed in on all sides by massive, invisible hands. His breathing was shuddering, and Steve realized it had been almost a year since he’d had an attack.

Steve ducked into a small, private room at the end of the hall. He was grabbing at his throat, scratching where the chain of his dog tags itched his neck. He paced in front of the wide window, and could not even let the blanketing winter calm him.

“Scones?” came a voice in English, but thick with a German accent.

Steve jumped. He’d thought he was alone.

Steve saw an older man sitting on a wicker chair in front of a wicker table, a lunch in front of him that was just a tad too big for one person. He looked over at Steve over the rim of his spectacles, his white hair wild and uncombed.

“I’m sorry, I thought I was alone,” Steve said. “I’ll go.”

“You don’t look like you would benefit from being alone,” said the man. “Come, sit here. Entertain an old man for a while. Sit, sit.”

Steve wandered over, his feet seeming to made the decision for him. It was the draw of an unfamiliar, kind face, and the excuse to sit down.

“This is a terrible business,” said the old man. “I only wish I could help more, but this is a new world for me. My expertise and my bias has been strictly scientific. I simply don’t know what to make of this business with _ghouls_ , of all things. Fascinating though it is, it’s still strange.”

“I know the feeling,” Steve said with a smile. “This was new to me once. I had to figure it out on my own.”

The smile was for the old man, not himself. When his smile was met with concern, he let his face fall.

“What do you do for the effort, Mr. Rogers?” the old man asked.

“Not much,” Steve said.

“I know full well what you can do. I’m here on Agent Carter’s request, after all. I would not say  ‘not much.’ You know what I find interesting?”

“What?” Steve asked, genuinely curious.

“The Nazis, and the Empire that came before them, they are obsessed with the Will. The will of humanity, of their race, whatever they define that as--but they discount you as being one of the weak. People tell you that you are weak-willed because of your body, don’t they?”

“I suppose,” Steve said.

The way the old man leveled his gaze at him laid a feeling of shame over Steve. They both knew what his tone meant. Steve looked down at his own arms, thin, leading to large hands with long fingers. Knowing the smallness extended to the rest of him. The way he wasn’t supposed to have been.

Steve had been about to accept it, that they had been right about him his entire life. There was something wrong with him. He was broken. He was going to be the weak link that broke the chain of society. It wasn’t just his body that was wrong. His mind was wrong, always had been. That was why he was a burden.

He’d fought back against the eugenicists in New York, tried his hardest to get them off street corners in his neighborhood. Their words had found him anyway, sitting in a drawing room in Austria.

“Yet you’ve willed strength into your body. And you say you  ‘suppose?’” the old man said.

“It wasn’t me,” Steve said. “It was nothin’ but weird luck.”

“Agent Carter told me the angel is gone. So where does your power come from if not the will?”

Steve opened his mouth to explain.

He had no explanation.

The lack of an explanation made it slide together.

The strangeness in his head and in his body, the feeling of being full up of something new, of the influence in his mind--it had been going away. But his ability to see beyond, to summon, to be a conduit, that had not gone away.

His guardian angel--they had been showing him the way. Just until he could do it on his own.

“Where does it come from?” the old man asked. “The will, I mean.”

“I don’t--“

Steve closed his mouth. His stare was thousands of yards away.

“Me,” Steve said, his jaw clamping shut after he said the word.

Something like a bell from a church tower, its vibration only, ran through his body.

The old man smiled, and his eyes were bright.

“You haven’t eaten your scone,” he said and pushed the plate with the warm, fresh pastry towards Steve.

Steve pulled the plate towards him. He looked at the bright red strawberry jam on the side and smeared a little bit on the edge of the pastry with a gleaming silver butter knife. He inhaled the smell of freshly baked bread and berry preserves.

He’d never gotten to take another bout of R&R with Bucky. He’d been looking forward to real food, but he hadn’t had an appetite since--

He bit into the scone and the warmth that went through him was exactly like the first time he’d felt the energy that would later let him summon his shield.

“Thank you,” Steve said, and the relief in his sigh was like a man about to cry.

“You’re very welcome, Mr. Rogers.”

“You can call me Steve. I’m sorry, I didn’t--I didn’t ask your name.”

“Dr. Erskine. But you can call me Abraham if you like.”

“Okay, Abe.”

The doctor chuckled.

Steve and Erskine sat in comfortable silence, and did nothing but eat, not speaking, for a half an hour while they watched the blanket of snow thicken over the garden outside the window.

The silence of winter was gathering, and for just that half hour, Steve decided he would let himself be in the quiet.

#

Dr. Erskine cleaned the inside of Steve’s elbow with alcohol. The doctor had explained the procedure. Steve had to keep reminding himself that he was a volunteer, and he’d asked Peggy for a way to make him a better conduit.

He hadn’t quite expected this.

“Does it trouble you?” Erskine asked. “To have me poking around your body?”

Steve’s barely audible “no,” and the gentle shake of his head, was enough to convince the man he meant it.

“I never thought Hitler’s occult obsession would go this far,” Erskine continued. “I thought it was all part of the fervor, but--when was the first time you knew about this other world?”

Steve hadn’t told anybody but Bucky the story. It had taken him months of being in the field, long after they had begun their affair, to tell the story. With Erskine, Steve felt he could let it tumble out. It was the first time he had actually wanted to, and not just felt like it was a last resort.

He blinked rapidly as he gathered his thoughts.

“I was--it was on the train,” Steve said. “I was coming home from a class.”

“A class?” Erskine asked.

“Yeah. Art school. Just a life drawing class. I’d been sick and I’d felt strange for a while. I--I’d actually died. Peggy told you that. There was this man on the train, and he was staring at me. I knew something was wrong, something different than the usual thing you get on the train. I noticed because people usually don’t see me at all. And he was staring. Staring right at me.”

Erskine had plunged the needle in and was taking blood, but Steve hadn’t noticed. He was still talking.

“This man, he just looked like he wanted to murder me. The other people on the train were just minding their own business. I thought somebody would notice him. I tried to look away. He just kept staring and I got real cold.”

“And then he attacked you,” Erskine guessed.

“Yeah. I was on the ground and he was hurting me, and it felt like I was being stabbed. I thought I was going to die. I just looked up and I saw this face and he just--I’d never seen something that full of hate.”

“Then what happened?”

“I had this real clear thought. Not a voice. At Bellevue, they wrote it down as a voice, but that’s not right. It was like a bell. It gave me the idea to say a prayer. I said it in Latin because that’s what I remembered from church, when I was a kid. Came to, everybody was crowding around, trying to figure out what was wrong with me, because I’d just had a fit and was screaming on the floor, half in Latin, but when I looked up, the man was gone. That’s all.”

Steve finished with a shrug, eager to stop talking about himself. He looked down and held the cotton ball Erskine was holding on to his skin.

“’That’s all?’” Erskine asked.

“Yup,” Steve said with a nod.

“’That’s all?’ I can’t imagine anything more terrifying.”

Steve arched a brow in confusion. He looked down to watch Erskine affix the bandage over the puncture wound.

“Got enough?” Steve asked.

“Well, there will be more, so why waste it?” Erskine joked. “Now, the tattoos.”

Steve took off his clothes until he was down to his boxer shorts.

They’d begun with the text running up his spine. Steve said that getting them was when his body had begun to feel different. One army doctor had insisted that his previous physician had to have taken the wrong notes, because his spine was much straighter than it was noted to be in his file. He was even taller by an inch.

Then he’d gotten the ones around his arm, once he started talking to Dernier. There were circles of script around the biceps and forearms, an old pastoral spell in French, the calligraphy from the sixteenth century. He had matching ones on his calves and thighs.

On his chest there was a chunk of Italian script from a sixteenth century book they had uncovered in Venice. They had traced the wording exactly and transferred the image over his heart. Ever since, he’d had no more arrhythmia.

In the center of his chest was the tattoo they had done to prepare to meet the necromancer. If they were going to come for Zemo and his necromancer, he would need reinforcements.  

The circle, a ring made of an ancient spell in elaborate calligraphy, was placed in the center of his chest. A five-pointed star was set inside a circle made of Aramaic text, three lines of geometric binding spreading out from the star, their edges just brushing Steve’s shoulder.

“This is your defense against Zemo retrying to capture the angel?” Erskine asked.

“Dernier said it was pretty fool-proof,” Steve told him.

“You think he would still attempt it, now that he knows he himself cannot host and contain the energy?”

“Can’t take any chances.”

If they were to fail, and Steve were to be captured by the Empire, he had to make sure they couldn’t use him to reach into the plane the angels were from, not even if Steve’s guardian had really left. Steve couldn’t take that risk.  

Zemo’s use of deamoniac energies gained from his partnership with the necromancer would be terrifying if he harnessed an angel. Demonic was one thing. Corrupted demonic was something else entirely.

Erskine’s assistant was taking archival photographs. The blonde woman with the elfin face seemed disinterested in Steve. She seemed to think of Steve as a specimen and had not said anything directly to him. She led him away to be weighed. Erskine took the three vials he had filled with Steve’s blood and carefully placed them in a container.

“If you feel a little woozy, let me know,” the assistant said.

“I’m ninety-five pounds, but I’m not a lightweight,” Steve said with a little smile.

“A hundred and ten,” she corrected him.

Steve’s brows came together. He focused on the weight balanced on the scale and it was there, right on the one hundred and ten mark. He had been without real food for weeks, travelling on foot, yet he’d managed to gain weight. The most he’d previously remembered weighing was ninety eight pounds, after a particularly good Thanksgiving and an alright Christmas.

Peggy strode into the bedroom, and Steve smiled at the sight of her. He straightened his spine. She nodded to him, he nodded back. Peggy turned to the assistant.

“Private Lorraine,” she said. “When you’re done assisting Dr. Erskine I was hoping you could--“

“I’m not a nurse,” reported Private Lorraine. Then, seeing the glare she got from Peggy for speaking out of turn to a superior, she found a new way to speak. “I simply want to be sure that I am assigned to the correct post, ma’am.”

Peggy leveled her eyes, nodded.

“I brought you into the Strategist Paranormal Reserve for a reason, Private. Do you recall?”

Lorraine’s eyes were bright with surprise. She looked back at Steve, who had returned to the examination table. Steve saw a spark of anxiety in Lorraine’s face and her mouth was a thin line. Erskine was distracted with the last of his documentation and didn’t know what was about to happen in his makeshift lab.

Steve wished he could be invisible. Not just to avoid them looking to him, but because he also wanted to stay. He had no idea what Peggy was about to do, and he had to admit he loved that about her.

“Think of who you’re in the room with,” Peggy reassured her.

Lorraine seemed to be chewing on her thoughts as well as the inside of her cheek.

“Witchcraft,” Lorraine stated, with a small hem to clear her nervousness.

Peggy nodded, smirked slightly.

“Then you _are_ the woman I requested,” Peggy said. “Good. We’ll need to keep track of that. Once you’re done here, I would like to contract something specific from you. Meet me afterwards, Private. Doctor, is it time?”

Erskine re-entered their space, and Steve wondered if he’d really been oblivious at all.

“It is,” Dr. Erskine said. “Are you comfortable with being in the room during the procedure?”

“I’ll be fine, thank you,” Peggy replied with a curt nod.

Peggy had her look, the one something prickled her nerves. She wasn’t in a place to complain, so she stayed mum, like she normally would.

“I explained to you everything you wanted to know before we proceed, Steven?” Dr. Erskine asked.

“Yup,” Steve said and nodded.

“You know absolutely everything you need to know?”

“I can do this.”

“Steven--“

“I can. Go ahead.”

Erskine nodded.

The tray was pulled closer to the bed they were using where normally there would be a gurney. Private Lorraine guided Steve to lay down. Steve’s body hitched at the feeling of straps, tied to the bedframe, even though he had been told they were a precaution.

“Are you sure?” Erskine said, narrowing his eyes at the reaction.

“Yeah,” Steve said with a curt nod.

“It’s a modification of an earlier serum,” Erskine had explained. “That first experiment was a failure. I saw what became of the man who took it when it, and he, were not ready. When I fled Germany, I chose not to revisit this project. But the opportunity to enhance your abilities so you can put a stop to this had made me reconsider.”

“But its fine now, right?” Steve asked.

Erskine sighed, shrugged, bushy eyebrows popping over the rim of his glasses. Steve’s lips were a thin line as he swallowed his nervousness.

“You understand this makes you the first test subject,” Erskine said. “This will not do what I had originally designed it to do. But your body should be able to handle certain energies much better. That’s all it can do.”

“That’s all I need,” Steve said.

“We won’t know if this works until after you make your move. You may be able to go through with your plan. Or it will tear you apart. In confronting him, you still could die.”

“Lots of people are dying, Abe,” Steve said. “I just wanna stop it from being a whole lot more.”

Steve barely flinched as the needle entered his arm. He was about to say it was nothing, but when Private Lorraine walked away he recognized the needle as standard. All he’d been given was penicillin.

The syringe full of a blue mixture was still on the table. He swallowed his lips and tensed as Erskine came near with it. Steve shut his eyes.

The puncture of the needle was no worse than his other vaccinations. He waited for something to happen, even began to wonder if that was all there was.

Then his body seized. If it hadn’t been for the straps, the jerk of his body stiffening would have propelled him off the table.

“Private Lorraine, if you’d please,” he heard Erskine say.

The fright in Erskine’s voice infected him. Steve’s heart was already racing and he couldn’t keep it from quickening all the more.

Then he heard her, the voice chanting in a language Steve didn’t know. Lorraine’s voice invoked the spell. Steve remembered filling up with light, like it was liquid and coursing. Something about it this time wasn’t as pure, as divine. It just felt like the white-hotness of pain.

Steve gritted his teeth to contain the scream that was ripping out of him anyway.

“Stop!” Peggy said. “Stop the incantation, it’s killing him!”

“Don’t!” Steve yelled with the last of the scream that he would allow out of his throat.

The chanting continued, but more strained, slower. He felt a hand on his forehead.

 _I can’t go home. I’m not okay. I have to do what’s right. I have to fix this_.

Private Lorraine’s invocation ended, and the white-hot light transformed into the warmth of bathwater, of hot soup, and cocoa in winter.

Covered in droplets of sweat, already drying in the cold air of the bedroom, he came down. The absence of pain was so complete that it caused him to tremble. Then the euphoria, like an amplified sensation of someone--Bucky--running his fingers through his scalp, which spread through his entire body.

As his eyes came into focus, he saw Dr. Erskine’s face first. Then he saw what was behind him--

The spirit hadn’t been there before. Ghosts looked like people, but not quite right, just this side of bloodless, eyes fixed and staring. But this wasn’t a person.

Steve wondered how long the spirit with the red face had attached itself to Erskine’s back. It was clinging to the edges of him, half its face visible, and one eyeball wild as it stared out at him from hollow, skinless eye sockets. He was disappearing, and Steve saw that he could make the red skull come back, if he focused, but it faded again when he let it go.

“Are you alright?” Peggy’s voice like a bell.

Steve flinched when her voice echoed. He’d heard it perfectly in what had been his deaf ear. He turned to her and her eyes were bright under a pinched brow. Steve knew that look--when she wanted to reach out and comfort with touch, but didn’t know where her boundaries laid.

“Steven?” Dr. Erskine’s voice said.

Steve turned back to him, but couldn’t focus on his face. He just saw the mad eye staring out of the red skull behind Erskine’s back.

Steve turned his face to find that Erskine had caught him. From the sadness that appeared in the doctor’s face, he knew about his specter. Erskine’s mouth became firm as one more person knew about it, too. The doctor turned to Lorraine and Peggy.

“I believe this was a success,” Erskine announced.

#

“One hundred and thirty,” Private Lorraine said.

Her voice was impressed, surprised; she was much warmer to him than she’d been before. Her lips even turned up into an almost-smile. Steve couldn’t help smiling back.

He put his hands on his waist and realized it was broader than usual, solid, and he had to suck in his stomach and puff up his chest to see his ribs.

“And I think perhaps another inch,” Peggy suggested, raising her hand above her head.

Steve stepped down off the scale. Peggy handed him the SPR shirt, the initials surrounded by wings, a cryptic ward hidden behind the letters. He slipped it on, and for once he knew what it felt like to have on a tight shirt.

“How do you feel?” Peggy continued.

“Not bad,” Steve said. “Really not bad at all.”

“Do you feel different?”

“That is the difference.”

He had been smiling. Steve’s face only fell when Peggy’s did.

“Monty said he was ready to update us on what he and Morita were working on,” Peggy said, hiding her troubled thoughts behind business.

Steve didn’t broach it. He followed close beside her as they left the bedroom. It felt odd to be just that inch or so taller and broader. Taller was not so interesting, with an inch being the height of some bootheels. Broader, he had not quite gotten used to. It was so slight that Steve only noticed it by how he found his arm sliding against the wallpaper before he corrected himself.

“What did Monty want to show us?” Steve asked.

“He was looking into the classifications of reanimated types,” Peggy said. “He said he found-- _Good lord_!”

They’d just opened the door and Steve’s reaction was not vocal but just as surprised, mouth wide open and eyebrows shot up.

“Bloody hell,” Monty swore as he wrested himself out from underneath Morita.

Morita, who was frozen like a rabbit in headlights until Monty shoved him upright. Steve saw them zip up their trousers with just enough quickness that he could tell they hadn’t gone very far. Steve laid a hand over his mouth as he watched the two carry on readjusting themselves as quickly as possible.

Monty moved a piece of paper on the desk he’d been shoved down onto so that it lay straighter. Like it was really something that needed to be done in that moment. That one piece of paper. And not the rest of the paper that had been crushed and scattered under them.

“Peggy, I, uh--,” Monty began.

“Lieutenant,” Peggy said curtly enough to end it. “Did you have something for us, or should we leave you alone for _five minutes_?”

“No ma’am,” Monty said. “We’re ready.”

“Five?” Morita couldn’t help responding to the comment.

“Did you find what we were looking for, or not?” Peggy said.

Steve nearly lost it as he saw the color rise in her cheeks.

“We can do it, ma’am,” Monty said.

“And I can open the door we need,” Morita confirmed. “It’s not exactly the safest thing, but this is the only way Dernier’s plan can work.”

Steve remembered why they were there.

The color that had risen in every face in the room seemed to drain. Steve took his hand away from his mouth, no more mirth to cover up.

“Bring him in,” Steve said with a sigh.

They brought the Shadow into the library. It had been hours, but Steve’s anger had not died down as much as he wished it had.

The Shadow Man had no way of speaking. Monty explained that they could understand but not speak words. Monty also assured them that there were other ways of communicating.

Morita cleared the desk of the paperwork. Monty pulled several maps from under the desk. They were large, but the one on top was not heavy with detail.

He used Bucky’s eyes and brows to look about. Steve’s stomach churned at the hints of familiarity. The shadow man had enough intelligence to be wondering what he was doing there.

Monty led the shadow man to sit in the chair. He lowered into it with no expectations or protests, even when they awkwardly pushed the chair further towards the desk and the map.

Morita stood at the opposite side of the desk, Monty behind the chair. Monty’s hands were hovering by the shadow man’s face. He nodded to Morita, but then closed his eyes and breathed through his nose.

Morita took his deck of tarot cards and began to shuffle them. He looked very unlike a fortune teller--more like an Atlantic City card dealer. He pulled a card from the top of the deck and held it out.

_mondo_

It hovered in midair just as it had done the last time. It was not as intense; the shaking around the edges of reality was not present. In its place, there was an eerie stillness, like the gulp of breath in the air just before a massive thunderstrike.

Monty whispered low. Steve never heard what it was. But then the shadow man cocked Bucky’s head to the side, as if it were listening for something. He saw Bucky’s mouth, once a straight line, become slack and open, then moving up and down wordlessly, as if he were trying to say something. But words would ever come out of him.

He raised his left hand. It hovered for a moment as it reached forward, but then paused. But another inaudible mumble from Monty and the shadow man stretched his black hand over the map. One finger pointed downwards and hovered like a weighted pendulum. His finger came down and landed on the map.

“Central Europe,” Peggy said.

The shadow man took his hand back. Peggy pulled the map off the desk and replaced it with another.

Again, Monty said something low. The shadow man raised his hand, let it drop.

“Germany,” Peggy whispered.

It took its finger away and Peggy replaced the map with one of Germany.

The black hand pointed and landed again. Steve looked over and locked eyes with Peggy.

“That’s where Zemo is,” Steve said. “We’re going.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Berlin--December, 1944**

Much of Berlin was rubble, but the snowy cloud cover of mid-December had keep more Allied bombs from dropping. Steve would often risk a glance out the glassless window and see nothing but brown and grey dirt and gray stone until, like he was looking at two separate pictures side-by-side, there was a green park and an affluent neighborhood. The neighborhood reminded Steve of the brownstones in New York, but with German architectural charm. Within feet of that picturesque December painting, wasteland.

People lived in the blocks near the ruins, and they were preparing for Christmas. They were baking treats, their children were being given promises, and bombs were still falling.

Steve pulled away, afraid he would be seen. Even though the neighborhood was abandoned, there were still patrols, and a sniper’s sights were long.

Steve jerked to a halt as he turned away. He looked up, into the face that was still sharp in contrast to how familiar it was, yet how unfamiliar its expressions were.

The shadow man had been craning his head around Steve, curious as to what he had been looking at. Steve put his palm on the shadow man’s chest to steer him back. Once in the shadows, he gave Steve a curious stare, and Steve thought he even saw a mote of fear.

“Away from the windows,” Steve reminded him, the third time that day.

The shadow man cocked his head at Steve. His eyes flicked over to the window, then back to Steve. It made no motion to show that it had understood.

Steve sighed, gestured for him to sit in the only chair in the room, and it obeyed.

Steve came back into the large, open loft, where the rest of the commandos were gathered around a map. They crouched on the floor, moving broken chess pieces around Berlin, while Peggy leaned over to supervise the planning.

“They keep the soldiers they mean to parade through the city here,” Monty said, pointing to the rook in the northwest corner. “All Allied soldiers. Meant for morale, for the citizens to see them move through the streets.”

“Those are the ones they’re going to experiment on next?” Peggy asked.

“Yes. It’ll be a grotesque business. Zola is a more skilled necromancer than I am, but the results could be the same. If he cannot control his power enough with the malachite, those soldiers will be just as that man I resurrected in New York.”

“What about the ones that will be infused with the foreign souls?”

“I haven’t the slightest. Necromancers have tried, in the past, to infuse corpses with souls that don’t belong to those bodies, and the results have always been disastrous.”

Steve swallowed at the memory, of the rambling, sputtering, and bleeding ghoul. He wondered if it would be the same.

“So what are we gonna do about getting into the factory?” Morita asked. “I mean, it’s not like we can all play the spy game.”

Morita and Gabe shared a glance.

“No, we do this in one stroke,” Steve said. “They won’t have time for anything when we go in at once. We have some time, so let’s do this right--“

“Where’s Bucky?” Dugan interrupted.

All of their heads jerked up. Dugan was looking around, his face pressed with frustration. The rest of them were swiveling their heads around. But the shadow man was not there, and there were no corners to hide behind.

Steve’s eyes had gone right to the solitary chair, now empty, away from the sight of any windows.

He ran to the window, still away from any potential sniper’s sight, and peeked out.

The dark figure of the shadow man was walking, purposefully, westward. He had the stride they’d been taught in the army--walk like you’re trying to get somewhere. It was more purpose than he’d seen in the shadow man since they’d retrieved him from Zola.

“What the hell is he doing?” Peggy asked.

“He’s our homing beacon,” Gabe pointed out. “He’d doing what we wanted him to do. That means Zemo is here.”

“Well then, darling,” Peggy said, turning to her husband. “It looks like our strategy timeline needs to move to thirty seconds ago.”

#

The crowd was anticipating a parade. Not a large crowd, but perhaps a few dozen. The routine collected spectators all the same. A handful of the Berliners seemed to be looking forward to seeing what was to come, but there was no way to tell until they saw the soldiers move through. Most looked forlorn, war-weary, and stood with the same expression as anybody having to do something mandatory. Steve moved into the crowd, his hands firmly in the pockets of the blue, overlarge peacoat he wouldn’t part with, even with Peggy’s insistence that it wasn’t the local fashion.

Nobody looked at Steve. He knew they wouldn’t. Nobody ever did.

With the exception of the five ghosts lined at the edge of the park, as if they, too, were simply waiting for the parade. Their eyes were leveled at Steve, their skin blackened and red from the bomb fire that had killed them.

Steve sharply turned his head away. They weren’t the type to attack. He was pretty sure. Mostly sure.

He pulled the coat in tighter and slicked the loose strands of his hair that had fallen on his forehead back into place.

Many of the faces in the crowd weren’t happy. There were a lot of sullen faces, knowing what the day’s parade would entail. That it was winter, and a half inch of snow laid on top of everything, made them restless and miserable. In any other time, he was sure it would be a picturesque image, and that the parade would anticipate Christmas.

Then he saw them, in the distance.

The SS soldiers that led them were dressed in pristine, pressed uniforms, boots shining and silver buttons gleaming in the low light coming in from overcast skies. It was audacious in the presence of the weary citizens, and the ragged prisoners. Marching behind with dragging feet were Allied prisoners. Their clothes were rags, some of them still bloodied and torn. A few of them looked like they had fresh wounds; others had older wounds, and hollow with hunger and exhaustion. Those soldiers had been in Germany for a while.

Steve felt his heart skip. He caught sight of Bucky--the shadow man--across the street. He was standing at the edge of the road, in front of the layer of grim spectators. His sharp, unnaturally blue eyes were trained on the coming soldiers.

The Shadow Man walked into the streets, marching up to the grim parade. Steve turned, got out of the slight crowd and onto the sidewalk and began to rush down.

“ _Heil_!” a man said joyously as Steve passed.

The sound of those words jolted Steve. At the sight of Bucky’s face, Steve had forgotten for a moment where he was and what he was doing. He didn’t have time to respond, so he kept going.

“<Hey! I said Heil!>“ said the man again and there was nothing in his voice that was friendly or happy any longer.

Steve gave him a quick glance, but kept going.

He felt a hand jerk him back and he stumbled, nearly falling backwards in the tangle of his own feet. He wasn’t looking just at the man who had spoken to him, but two other men who had appeared. They were not with the stranger--they had just come out from the crowd, insulted at Steve’s lack of a salute.

A million options jumped into his head. Bucky--the shadow man--was getting away.

He could hope his accent was fine, and say something in German. He could give the salute and apologize, hoping again they wouldn’t notice the accent.

All of those options failed to manifest into reality.

“Sorry, fellas,” Steve said.

He ran. There were three pairs of feet after him, but he didn’t have time to worry about himself.

He dove into the crowd. He was not as small as he used to be, but he was still thin enough to push his way through the tight press of bodies. He burst into the cleared streets. Those who weren’t looking at the man who had rushed past them were pointing to the man marching straight towards the line of soldiers.

The parade came to a halt at the sight of this lone, dark-haired man with eyes so blue they nearly glowed. The soldiers at first did nothing with their weapons but lower them slightly, not yet pointing them, not knowing what to do about this strange man. Hush settled.

Steve didn’t know why, but the SS soldiers allowed the shadow man to walk into the depth of the parade, through the lines of Allied prisoners, who stared at him with the fear of unknowing.

Steve felt hands on his arms, and he barely registered it was one of the three men, because they saw what Steve was seeing. The American in the crowd was no longer their biggest concern.

A shout from within the parade caused the SS men to part. Steve had no idea how he’d not seen him in the throng, but Zemo strode forward, his mask still affixed to his face, the edges around the seams buried into flesh. He was still a strong, powerful man with broad shoulders and thick limbs, but Steve was certain he was thinner than before.

The shadow man stood before him, and Zola appeared from behind Zemo. There was something in Zola’s hand, metal and reflecting the low winter light.

Neither Zemo nor Zola had expected their former servant to appear. Steve recognized the pleasure of seeing opportunity on Zola’s face. His smile was gleaming with a layer of saliva, as a dog’s is at dinner time.

“Now’s as good a time as any,” Zola said.

Zemo turned his head. Steve saw what he was looking at.

The film crew was a block away. Steve hadn’t seen them. The cameras and sound equipment were meant to blend in. A woman, dressed in jodhpurs and her hair short, was directing them. She was filming everything. The crowd really had been mandatory. They had been filming propaganda.

Zemo was staring at Steve when he turned back. There was a new hatred, the kind of hatred Steve had only ever seen out of the eyes of the dead.

Zemo gave a signal to Zola. From the look in the necromancer’s eyes, Zemo had just given him a gift

Zola opened his hand, and there was a spark of green.

Steve’s reflex was automatic. In a solid jerk, he wrested his arms free of his captors.

The Allied soldiers parted as Steve ran through them, just as the shadow man had. He was so close to Zemo. His arm came back, and the spark of light came forth.

The wave of green spread out like a ripple in a lake. It met the flash of white and red, and something else. Another color.

He planted his feet on the concrete like a tree growing roots. The force of the blast was nothing he’d had to withstand before--not the unnatural strength of a ghoul, not the attacks of a specter or a haunter, not even the demonic forces of Zola. He gritted his teeth and held, refused to let the shield disintegrate.

It relented. The crush of the ocean receding from a levy at last. He lowered his shield and he looked down at it.

He looked down at the shield. There was a new color.

Blue. Navy and as solid as if it were painted there, behind the solid white of a five-pointed star.

Steve lowered his shield, and he saw what the necromancer had done. It threw the question of the color and the star out of his mind. His throat felt like a pit was lodged in it, and he couldn’t even scream.

People were lying on the streets, and in the road, all but the lone figures of Zola and Zemo. The stillness in the air could only have meant they were dead. Not just the Allied soldiers being marched, but the SS.

Steve’s chest rose and fell. He hadn’t been able to do anything for any of them.

He turned around, expected more death.

The crowd stared at him.

All of the people behind him were still standing, watching, stunned into silence. Half of them were the soldiers he had been able to shield. It was not just what had happened, Steve creating a protective V against as much of the blast as possible, but the terror that laid beyond the blast, the circle of dead.

Steve’s heart could only break for them, for what he couldn’t spare them.

“Go, get out of here!” Steve cried, forgetting a moment where he was. “<Go! It’s not safe!>“

The remaining SS who had been leading the parade raised their weapons to corral the Allies, only to find their weapons stolen from them in the chaos of the soldiers breaking out of formation.

A shrill screech pierced the air, followed by a bevy of gasps.

Steve witnessed them rise. It could not have been confused with stunned people shambling up. They did not stand. They _rose_. Rose as though they were connected by the sternum to a piece of unbreakable fishing wire. Each of the dead were being tugged carefully, slowly towards the sky by that invisible string.

Their heads rolled down, and their eyes opened. They searched the city with eyes no longer filled with human presence or intention.

The dead stared at Steve.

The hatred of every ghost he had ever seen, the fury of the dead, was multiplied in the crowd of dozens. Some of whom had eyes that shone with an uncanny presence, not the emptiness of a new ghoul looking for orders.

Bucky’s face peered out at him from the crowd, grin gleaming. Steve knew. It had never been broken apart, innocent and confused. The shadow man did not cause this, but he knew he was a servant of Zemo’s, and he was overjoyed to be among the terror.

The first of them shuddered, and Steve’s stomach dropped. There was a vibration in their flesh, like ripples, and the things burst forth. The corpses were only gates--conduits.

Steve knew what they were. Dugan had ranted about them enough, the things he’d seen in that basement, when his mind went far away. Daemonic beings from someplace in the universe that was impossible for them to comprehend. They were things which could not hold their shape--sometimes they were like tentacles, other times like pulsing muscles. A shape to describe them was impossible to pin down.

He thought at first they might be visions, like the dark and daemonic things he sometimes saw, and had could only sketch in impressions. But the screams of terror from behind him said otherwise.

They had been summoned from inside the gem, just as they’d feared they would be. He did not actually think they would be fully here, only that they would possess the ghouls the necromancer made. Yet there they were. Only a handful of ghouls remained, in the form of every SS officer.

One of the ghouls, dressed in black and shined silver, leapt. The jump was preternaturally far. Steve heard the crowd behind him gasp collectively as he blocked the ghoul. It bounced off of his shield like a rubber ball and rolled back on the street. The shifting daemoniacs were watching, not quite ready to attack. They were more intelligent, or else controlled by an intelligence, because Steve could tell that was a test. A test to see what his shield could do, like throwing ghouls at Dugan’s fence to distract them.

“< _Everybody, run!_ >“ Steve screamed again.

The crowd broke and ran, through alleyways and streets, and across the open grass of the nearby park.

The director in jodhpurs stayed precisely where she was and ordered the men holding the camera and sound equipment to do the same.

Some of the ghouls and daemoniacs scattered, leaping out into the city, spreading the crowd out in a burst of chaos. Only some. Most of them were coming for Steve. He held his arms to the side. The energy surged around his tattoos in circles of light.

One of the daemoniacs slammed into his shield, burning and hissing, but refusing to let go. It smoked as the shadow man had, a hissing puff of black vapor at the point of contact. The daemonic was at first a gigantic hand, but then its form slid into the shape of tentacles. Neither worked, and it became a blob trying to bleed over the edge.

Steve grit down on his teeth and pulled away, then hit it with the brunt of the shield. The daemonic was thrown back. They might have been ever-shifting and impossible to pin down, but they were as solid as anything.

He hit another one away, and then another, and then the next--

There was a massive mechanical whirr and a crackle almost as loud as lightning. He hadn’t seen Dugan coming until he was among the throng of the furious dead. Both Dugan and Steve were in the fray of daemoniacs and ghouls.

“I thought you were going to leave those in Austria!” Steve yelled.

“I told you I’d need  ‘em one day,” Dugan said.

Steve had never seen Dugan happier since he’d known him. None of the fear that made him flit his eyes into every dark corner was there. His face was steeled, and he even smirked.

As the daemoniacs reformed into a group, Dugan prepared for them, cocking the massive mechanized arms he had strapped to himself. When he held them down at his side, their knuckles nearly brushed the ground. The outside layer of metal crackled with the same otherworldly, blue energy as his sentries had. It was the first time Steve had seen Dugan’s invention at work: the Daemoniac Unfriendly Maimer. The abbreviation, “D.U.M.” had been spray-painted on each arm.

Steve looked beyond the chaos and saw Zemo’s purple hood as he marched away. In the next moment, the throng was too thick to see through.

“Go get him, kid,” Dugan said. The ends of the D.U.M.s unfurled into finger-like appendages that crackled with blue energy. “I got these guys.”

Steve wanted to stay, but he knew what he had to do. He made the choice to trust Dugan to help the Allied soldiers survive and get out of Berlin.

Steve had time to throw his shield at the ghoul that was attacking the director and her cameramen before he summoned it back and ran further into the streets of Berlin. Steve knew where Zemo would go. They had found out about their place of ritual. It was where their intelligence said Zemo would be, if he didn’t return to the factory.

Steve had seen the flash of a bulb several times. Of all the times the chaos had to have happened, it had been in the middle of a parade. The press presence was massive, there to drive home national propaganda. He was sure he’d had his picture taken a few dozen times. So much for all the secret two-man missions, the hiking through forests, the hiding in secret bases set up in eldritch ruins and castles.

He saw a bright purple cloth in the distance, and the gleam of the golden crow. All thoughts of Steve’s coming fame or infamy fell out of his thoughts.

He bounded away, his feet quick, like he’d had wings attached to them. Zemo was still so far away, and the ghouls and the citizens were thick on the ground. He felt like he was getting even further behind.

He heard the roar or a car engine and he skidded to a stop as the car’s tires screamed and it halted.

“Get in,” Peggy said, followed by a hail of fire from Gabe’s machine gun as he stood on the passenger side seat, his foot on the dash to steady himself.

Steve jumped into the back and Peggy gunned the engine.

They raced ahead of the crowds and into the emptied neighborhoods, where only a few people were milling outside. They were aware of the sounds in the distance, but the daemoniacs hadn’t made it that far into the city. They saw another car flash by in the next street over, and a few seconds later it caught up with them. Dernier was at the wheel with Monty and Morita in the back, shouting instructions at Dernier, half of which Dernier wouldn’t usually understand, but Monty’s pointing and shouts bridged the connection gap.

Both cars, stolen from the streets nearest the bombed-out neighborhoods, skidded to a halt.

Zemo stood under the spire of a church, on the steps leading up to the doors. Zola stood near, a few steps underneath him. The shadow man was marching inside, Steve getting one last glance at the face he used to know, before it disappeared into the darkness inside. Zemo followed after, as the distant wailing of air raid sirens began to sound.

Steve, Peggy, and the Commandos leapt out of the cars, Gabe and Dernier training their guns on Zola, Steve readying his shield by his side.

Zola was a small man, but his stance was wide, and the gauntlet in his hand was surrounded by the green light of the malachite. He might have even been smaller than Steve had been, but Steve still wouldn’t risk underestimating him. He gestured for the others to stay back as he, Monty, and Morita came to stand before him.

“Well, Rogers,” Zola began. “It is so nice for you to finally introduce me to your friends. I wished I could have met them at the tower, but you were so eager to ruin my base of operations. But no matter. What I have now--“

Zola looked at his gauntlet and the malachite inside. His face seethed with pleasure.

“We can help you, Dr. Zola,” Monty cut in.

Zola turned his glance away and stared at Monty with daggered eyes.

“It’s the amateur,” Zola said. “You do look as pathetic as I thought you would. If only you had come to me before throwing yourself in with these doomed Allies of yours. If you had potential, I may have made you great, but you have squandered your years and there’s no going back now.”

“Did he talk this much at the tower?” Morita asked Steve.

“More,” Steve said, lazily arching a brow.

Zola sneered at Steve.

Monty walked onto the church steps. Nobody had been prepared for him to do that. He was three steps up the flight when Zola rose up one step, away from him. Monty’s companions tensed, trying to be ready for whatever came next.

“The dead were never meant to be ours to control,” Monty said. “We were always meant to help them.”

“No,” Zola said. “They are ours. And I have brought forth ancient beings to take the place of the common, decaying man, so they might have glorious use.”

“It’s not for you to decide what use someone can have, alive or dead.”

Steve turned and he saw the daemoniacs coming. They had begun to imitate what they saw around them. They shifted into people-like shapes, to take on the angles of architecture, straight lines shifting into curves and waves, then back again. They were as if made of black clay, and some capricious god was still playing with forms.

“Monty,” Peggy cautioned.

“Give it to me,” Monty said to Zola, hand outstretched.

“Give you this?” Zola asked. “I will not give it to you, but I have another gift to give.”

Zola held the gauntlet out so the Malachite was presented, pulsing at the proximity of the souls it had distributed to the dead.

The Malachite pulsed and Monty looked to Morita.

“Now!” Monty cried.

Zola shouted as an object hit the gauntlet, knocking his hand back like it had been shot.

A card, old and fine, two angels blowing trumpets, being commanded by a figure in the sky. It was stuck to the gauntlet like it was magnetic. Zola tried to pull his arms from the gauntlet without touching the malachite, screaming as though the metal burned.

_Il giudizio_

The ghouls and daemoniacs leapt forward. Steve turned, ready to fight, and the commandos trained their guns on the ghouls.

A car came from around the corner and screeched to a halt. Steve saw the director from before, her camera strapped to the back of a truck bed, using it as a dolly, as she filmed what was about to happen.

The daemoniacs and ghouls stopped as if they’d hit a wall of molasses. Their arrest was sudden, but they still struggled forward. They could only push on a few centimeters at a time, a force keeping them back.

Monty’s hand was held out to them, his face straining with the effort of stopping them. Then Monty’s other hand reached towards Zola. The necromancer lifted off the ground, as if raised by the same invisible fishing line that had lifted the dead.

Morita’s eyes were closed, palms open by his side, face relaxed. Steve knew that face.

Morita had opened a door for Monty.

There was a bulb flash of green light and Monty screamed. Zola dropped from the air and fell onto the stairs. The necromancer’s head hit concrete with a heavy sound and Steve thought he heard a crack. He didn’t get back up.

Monty came forward to stand over the prone Zola, whose head was lying in a splat of his own red blood. Monty wrested the gauntlet from his hand and slid it onto his own.

Monty already looked exhausted. There was a line of red around his eyes, his legs shaking like a runner who had no more endurance. Putting the gauntlet on made him look like he had burdened himself with even more weight.

“You can do this,” Steve said, nodding to Monty.

Monty’s eyes were blank, and Steve could tell he was searching his own mind, adjusting to the feel of the malachite. He was getting used to the mere concept of what he was holding and controlling.

Monty nodded.

The daemonics were coming quick and fast as Monty’s barrier fell.

The whir and crash of metal pierced the air. They saw a shape come over a rooftop and down onto the street.

Dugan entered the fray with no hesitation. A shock from a D.U.M. would cause the daemonics to pop and smoke, before convulsing and becoming nothing more than smears that tried to collect themselves again. When they attacked Dugan in numbers, he would unfurl the fingers of the D.U.M.s and attack them, letting the device live up to its namesake.

Morita held his hands up, as if he were guiding something. His eyes were still closed, but Steve knew he knew exactly where to put his door.

“Any moment, darling,” Monty said, his voice straining like he were holding a hundred pound dumbbell.

“Now,” Morita whispered.

Monty opened the hand of the gauntlet. Another flashbulb flash of green light pierced the air.

The daemonics collapsed, boneless, nothing more than smears of oily muscle, but this time they did not collect themselves again. Every once and a while there would be a flailing, like they were trying to create limbs to reach out before the last of the daemonic’s forms were empty of their terrible intelligence. The ghouls dropped, as if they had been turned into bags of sand in the shape of people. Out of some of them there was a puff of green smoke, but most had simply fallen.

Steve didn’t have time to survey the aftermath. Monty had dropped onto his knees and was trying to hold on to the steps. Morita was there already, pulling Monty back up so they could see his face.

Monty’s hand slipped free of the gauntlet and the malachite fell from the center of the glove. The malachite tinked against the stone steps as it fell, step, by step, by step, and Steve was sure it was going to shatter at the bottom.

And then Peggy was there, a pair of tongs in one hand, and a lead box in another. She picked it up and threw it inside, the lid slamming shut and the hinges clicking as she forced them down. Gabe was crouching next to her, a piece of white chalk in his hand, and he drew seals over the locks.

Steve turned back to Monty and saw the blood on his face. Monty didn’t just have a nosebleed. The whites of his eyes were pink, and blood was falling from them like a stream of tears.

“Jesus, Monty,” Morita said.

Morita’s voice was barely containing his panic.   Steve was beginning to share it. Monty was barely holding on to consciousness, his eyes rolling back, but then snapping back into wakefulness after forcing himself to blink. Steve grimaced but he made it into a smile as he got Monty to look at him.

“It’s okay, Jim,” Steve said. “Monty’s been in worse shape. You should have seen him last time we were on leave.”

Monty’s face shifted into confusion. Then he cracked a smile and Steve was his teeth were pink as well.

“You’ll never let Majorca go, will you, Rogers?” Monty said.

Steve smiled for him again, glad to have relief. Morita’s hand was still firmly holding onto the wool of Monty’s vest in a vice-grip.

Steve lifted his head as he heard it from inside--the chanting. He eyes narrowed. It wasn’t just Zemo and the shadow man that were in there.

“Go,” Monty said through a grunt of pain.

Steve took a long look at Monty. He nodded. They both knew Monty was either going to be fine, or he wouldn’t be. Steve shot up the stairs.

“Go with him,” he heard Monty say to Morita. “Go. I’ll be fine. Go!”

Steve entered the church, and passing under the arch was like entering another realm.

Inside the church was darkness. There were no electric lights on, couldn’t have been--not with the hole in the ceiling that let a shaft of daylight inside, the streak punctuated by snowflakes falling into the church and collecting in the hole that Steve assumed had been made by an unexploded bomb. After the fighting outside, it was quiet. It were as if the whole world had taken a gulp of air and was holding its breath.

Zemo was at the altar, six of his servants in purple hoods and robes surrounding him. Their ritual had begun. Steve began to march forward, but then he stopped in his tracks.

The shadow man was staring at him, out of Bucky’s face. He was just under the altar, standing watch over his master’s ritual. He was looking at Steve with familiarity for the first time--and with complete hatred.

Steve knew that wasn’t Bucky. It couldn’t be. But he felt like he was bleeding out from a chest wound all the same.

Morita was standing just behind him, taking in the sight.

“You ready for this?” Morita asked.

“Nope,” Steve said with a muscle-loosening shrug. “But it’s gotta get done.”

Zemo turned away from his ritual, glaring out of the holes in his hood. The shadow man began to step forward, but all Zemo had to do was lift his hand. He stopped like he had encountered a wall.

“Here we are, at the end of the world,” Zemo said. “I’m debating between destroying you now, or waiting to see your heart break at the passing of the old world.”

“You know something?” Steve said as he began to walk to meet him. “Even at Bellevue, you talked too much.”

“I’m injured. Those conversations were important to me. Not only did you demonstrate the weakness of your compassion, but it was nice to be so truthful with someone.”

“I know it was all lies. You had me believing--“

“That I’d had a trauma because of my encounter with a demon? That was not a lie. With the exception that I called it a trauma. It was enlightenment, Steven. I’m bringing that enlightenment to the world. And when He comes, we will all be ready to receive the glory of Him. Except the unworthy. The weak, the distilled, the ugly. The ones like you.”

“Like I said. You talk too much.”

Zemo cocked his head to the side.

“Very well,” Zemo said.

Zemo signaled, and the shadow man leapt forward, closing the space between himself and Steve with unnatural speed. Steve barely manifested his shield in time. Zemo turned around to rejoin his ceremony, as if this were a mere inconvenience.

Steve saw it again, the puff of black smoke at the impact of the shadow man’s fist. More cracks had appeared on the black of his forearm.

Morita had his machine gun leveled at him, but Steve held his hand up.

“Wait,” Steve ordered. “I got this.”

Steve exchanged blows with the shadow man, waiting for its eventual, reckless move. The Shadow Man reached past Steve’s shield, tried to grab his blue coat. Steve grabbed Bucky’s--the shadow man’s--arm and held it still. The shadow man was stuck. His face was bright with realization as he saw Steve raise his shield above his head.

It was the first noise he’d ever heard come out of that mouth since his resurrection. It was almost like a “no,” that deep-throated cry.

Steve brought the edge of the shield down. The black arm ripped away with a single slice and Bucky’s body fell back onto the floor, empty of any presence to keep it alive. After a puff of black, it was nothing but a dead weight. Steve let go of the severed arm as it crackled like burning paper and then disintegrated into a cloud of smoke.

Bucky’s body laid in the church aisle. There was nothing in those staring eyes, but unlike before, Bucky couldn’t be mistaken as sleeping. It was a staring, traumatized face. A face Steve had seen on the faces of dead soldiers a hundred times before.

Steve knew it had been the shadow man’s last expression, but it was still contorting Bucky’s face. Steve was only relieved by one thought: that if they survived this, Bucky could be buried, in the plot he’d bought after his mother died, back in New York. But it was small triumph.

“Thank you for taking care of the pest,” Zemo said.

Zemo only shrugged at the fury in Steve’s glare.

“You were responsible for him,” Steve spat.

“He existed, and I tamed him,” Zemo said. “That’s all. He outlasted his usefulness. Once he began wanting to please me, it was the beginning of the end. Now there is just you and I.”

“I gotta ask one thing,” Steve said.

He walked up the center of the aisle to meet Zemo, who was striding down to meet him.

“Just one?”

“What did you want with an angel?”

Zemo planted his feet, and Steve was sure that if he could see under that mask, there would be a smug smile.

“He wants them dead, the ones he didn’t get the first time,” Zemo said. “And to control that kind of divinity? It would make me powerful enough to meet him on my own terms. And it’s only the powerful who shall survive Him.”

“But I guess you’re not all that interested in them now, huh?”

“I have larger designs than to simply appease Him when--“

“Alright, so that means we’re good to go?” Morita interrupted, fishing in his pockets.

“Do it,” Steve said.

Steve could see just enough of Zemo’s brows came together, his eyes narrowing at Morita.

Morita tied a cloth over his face. He’d had it drawn up, and Dernier had contacted an artisan he knew from the resistance. The woman who made it made the flags and badges for the RÃ©sistance, and darned their torn clothes, when she wasn’t making bombs. The Sumerian cuneiform words had been sewn into the black fabric with white thread, the embroidery thick and wide, giving it a look of embossed white ink. One word each laid over Morita’s eyes.

Then Morita held a card out. A maiden in a dress, the crescent moon in her arms.

_la luna_

“You can’t do that here,” Zemo said. “There is no door but the petty ones he always uses. The angels cannot meet us.”

“There’s a door, alright,” Steve said.

“How convenient. You just happened to have found a door in the exact place I would be using for my gathering?”

“Nope.”

“Then what are you prattling on about?”

“I am the door, fat-head.”

Zemo snorted, the beginnings of a laugh. The laugh died as soon as it was born, swallowed under the deepening realization in his eyes. His glare was as sharp as needles.

“You can’t bring Zazael here,” Zemo spat. “What nearly killed me was a lesser angel, and he almost tore you apart. And you are weak, Rogers. You cannot force him to appear.”

“Zazael is gonna do whatever I ask,” Steve said.

“Indeed?”

“Yup.”

“And why would a divine being obey the whims of someone like you?”

“Let’s ask them.”

Zemo reeled, his eyes and brow pinched.

Morita let go of the card. It hovered in the air, the center still, but the edges vibrating. Zemo gestured to it, as if he could make it small again, with just that motion.

“You think your can defeat me with this?” Zemo said. “You can’t destroy me. I have--“

“We have the malachite,” Steve said. “Your ghouls are asleep. Monty took away your daemoniacs. Your soldiers are scattered, and we’ll find them and we’ll stop them. All we wanted was to take it all away from you. Now it’s done. We’re finished here.”

“Killing me won’t help you win the war,” Zemo said.

“We just destroyed your Empire,” Steve said. “I’m just tying up the loose ends.”

“You think I mean this petty land squabble? There is so much more to this universe than you know, you fool. You won’t win the coming war. When He comes, it won’t matter to Him that you’ve destroyed me.”

“You’re right. This is strictly personal.”

The edges of the world vibrated again, threatening to unravel entirely. He came forward, ready to meet Zemo. Zemo reeled back as he felt the presence of the angel increase, filling the room. The air was so thick, it was almost suffocating.

“You listening, Zazael?” Steve asked, no longer looking at Zemo.

Steve lifted his head to the sky, as though the hole in the roof was really a window into heaven, or wherever the angels had come from. The sky was filled with the sounds of sirens, but the snow fell as gently as it ever did, not caring that the winter was not calm in the world of mankind.

“Look at me, Steve!” Zemo demanded.

“You want me for some reason, right?” Steve continued, shouting at the sky. “You wouldn’t have taken Bucky’s time if you didn’t have a reason. You want me to believe I’m that important, that you would let him die like this? Well, I’m strong enough now. I want to know. You better come over here yourself. Because you hear those sirens? I’m standing in the block the planes that are coming are ordered to bomb. If you don’t come here right now, I’m sending my men away, but I’m staying right where I am, you hear?”

“Without me, this world will eat itself,” Zemo began. “Kill me now, and you will not survive Him. I am the only one strong enough to stand next to His majesty.”

“You’re nothing,” Steve said, biting the air.

It was not like when the first angel had nearly come into their world. Steve had prepared. He did not hide inside of his body. He left it.

Steve saw himself from outside. His eyes were white, and they didn’t look solid anymore. It was like they were made of smoke in a glass bowl, and some of that smoke was escaping from his eyes, rising in streams into the sky.

Whatever vision was allowing Steve to see from outside his body was gone in a flash.

#

_Steve was staring at another himself, who looked at him as the other himself, and he refracted into infinity. Each mirror image was a reflection of a different man. He was himself, not himself, just alike others, slightly different, but the same every time. He thought he would go mad at the fun-house dizziness of it all._

Who are you? _he heard himself ask, though he had no voice to speak with._

_The colors, ever-present, flickered in the mirrors that he was rushing by. Red, white, and blue, star-spangled and striped, and he almost laughed at how comical he looked--like something out of the comic books he got at the train station and threw away once he got off the train._

_He wouldn’t be doing that anymore._

_“What the hell are you doing here?” came a voice from behind him._

_A young woman was standing in front of him. She was sneering at him. He’d been working with the women of the Allied forces long enough to recognize a woman seconds away from rightly telling him he was getting in the way._

_Steve took in the sight of her. Her hair was black and curly, her skin tan. He was surprised they made shorts that small. Her blue shirt had a star on the center, and red and white stripes decorated the shoulders of a jacket made of denim. A blue stripe, spangled with stars, was sewn down the arm. And what kind of shoes were those? Steve had the thought that he wanted a pair before shaking the superficial from his mind._

_“I don’t--,” Steve began. “I was just in Berlin.”_

_“You’re not supposed to come through here, Rogers,” she said._

_“You know me?”_

_“Yeah. And if you want to know, you’re just as big of a pain in the ass everywhere else as you are wherever the hell it is you just came from.”_

_“Where am I?”_

_“I don’t have time to babysit fun-sized Captain America. I have a trickster to punch in the head.”_

_“Wait--“_

_She kicked him hard, and the world behind him shattered like glass._

#

It was like jumping from the tower again, but he’d already been on the ground. He was shouting before he opened his eyes.

He tasted dirt in his mouth and coughed, his lungs hot, as if he had inhaled smoke. When he tried to push himself up, he shouted in pain. Every muscle felt as if had been pulled off the bone. But he bit down on the shout as it was halfway out of his mouth, his teeth his barrier.

Morita was hanging from the edge of a church pew, pulling himself off the floor, grunting. He reached for his blindfold and tore it off, blinking as he tried to see in the dim church.

“You’re done, right?” Morita said through pants. “You gotta be done.”

“What happened?” Steve asked.

“What happened? I don’t know, I was blind. I held that door open for three minutes. I figured you’d know.”

“ _Three minutes_?”

“Holy crap, Cap. What did you do?”

Steve looked over his shoulder and his eyes went wide.

Every hooded figure, along with Zemo, was on the ground. The walls of the church had changed, and he tried to understand what he was seeing. He realized, his chest expanding with awe, that the wood and paint had been bleached by light.

Steve heard commotion at the front of the church. Peggy was calling his name. He saw them all at the entrance. Gabe was holding Monty up. His face was still bloodied, but less exhausted. Dernier crossed himself at the entrance, and Dugan, who had left him D.U.M.s outside, had eyes wide with what Steve swore was recognition.

“I think it’s safe,” Morita said, waving them in. “It’s done. We just gotta get out of here before the planes arrive.”

“The planes aren’t coming,” Peggy said. “The pilots saw the light. We told them to look for it, and they’ve turned back.”

Steve heard the all-clear signal sound, as if on cue. The planes really weren’t coming. After three minutes, the Germans would have seen the planes turn back. His heart calmed. They would still need to get out of Berlin, but they at least weren’t running away from bombs.

Before Peggy could come and help him up, Steve refused with a gesture. He stood up the rest of the way, a small sound escaping from his throat.

“Did he say anything?” Steve asked Morita.

“What, the angel?” Morita said. “It was just noise. I didn’t hear anything but you and Zemo yelling. And then--screaming. A lot. I told you I’d open the door, and everything else was up to you.”

Steve’s head dropped, his hair falling in a limp fringe on his forehead. He was sure he was going to drop back to the floor.

He caught sight of him. Bucky. Nobody said anything when they caught him staring. Bucky’s corpse was still frozen in the confusion and fear of the shadow man. Steve took two shaky steps to cross to the other side of the aisle and collapse next to Bucky. He laid his hand over those staring eyes. Steve lifted his hand away, and it was just as he’d seen him dead the first time--he might as well have been asleep. But he couldn’t be mistaken for being asleep.

“What the hell was the point of any of this?” Steve asked.

“We have the malachite,” Peggy said. “The Empire can’t use it now. And we’ve saved thousands of people today, Steve. It was worth it.”

Steve gathered Bucky up and pulled his head into his lap. The body was too light, or at least Steve thought so. Steve pressed a hand over where Bucky’s heart was. He thought, perhaps, he could remember what his heartbeat felt like.

“The planes shouldn’t have turned back,” Steve said. “The coward didn’t even show up.”

Silence. The Commandos knew there was nothing any of them could say.

At the sounds of gasps and the rattle of guns being brought up, Steve jumped, clutching Bucky as he raised his sights.

Zemo was rising. Rising as his victims had risen.

His purple mask was disintegrating as he floated down from the air. He was still limp as his feet touched ground again at the point of his toes, lowering until he was standing on flat feet. The way the purple of his hood was disappearing, it was as if chips of purple paint were falling, but did not hit the ground before they vanished. Beneath the chipping paint was purple smoke, rising into the shaft of light.

Zemo’s face was just as it had been when Steve had known him as Gerold Stein. He blinked into consciousness, eyes like a sleepy toddler’s. He stared down at Steve.

And then anger.

“Why couldn’t you have simply followed the plan set out for you?” said Zemo.

And then Steve realized--not Zemo.

“Zazael,” Steve said, his tone barely compressing his anger.

Zazael nodded in deference.

“You were able to contain me,” Zazael stated.

“You’re inside of Zemo,” Steve pointed out.

“And Zemo is dead, and fast breaking apart by the molecule. But you. You survived me. I did not expect you to be quite _this_.”

Steve’s first instinct was to say something out of anger, but nothing came out. He realized why.

When Zazael had said “ _this_ ,” it wasn’t for any of the reasons he had been given over the course of his life. He did not mean “ _this_ ” to broadly cover his weakness, his sickness, or his lack of moral character.

He meant his strength. The angel hadn’t expected Steve to be strong. At least not as strong as he had been in that church. Not as strong as he’d become.

The mirrors, infinite, some version of him strong and tall.

“Why?” Steve asked. “Why any of this?”

Steve hadn’t thought that he’d never seen true pity out of a face that had once belonged to Baron Zemo.

“Do you wonder why we are so valuable?” Zazael asked. “We angels? He destroyed us. Because He loved Her.”

“Who the hell are you talking about?” Steve asked.

“They speak of him only as Thanos.”

“ _Jesus Christ_ ,” Dugan swore.

Dugan was covering his face. Dozens of ghouls and daemoniacs, and he’d been near-gleeful. The mention of that name, Thanos, and he didn’t give a crap that he was blaspheming in front of an angel. He was shaking with fear that surely outstripped any deference.

“He’s right to fear,” Zazael said, though there was distaste in the set of his mouth.

“Who’s Thanos so crazy about?” Steve asked.

“She whom we serve. Death.”

“Come on,” Steve said, his face pleading. “ _Come on_. Really?”

“Is this difficult to comprehend?”

“A little.”

Zazael was incredulous, sneering.

“Who do you think masters over the souls you see?” Zazael said. “And why do you think there are so many which are abandoned? Why do you think you do not see the souls of prehistoric man, but the wandering spirits of the recently dead? Nothing more than a few hundred years old?”

Steve turned to Peggy, and he saw they were having the same realization. She had encountered much, even seen many spirits, and Steve had seen them everywhere. Every ghost, every spirit they had encountered, were all no more than a few centuries old.

“Why have you not seen the soul of a Roman legionnaire? Or a peasant from the time of Charlemagne?” Zazael continued. “It is because we cannot shepherd them all, now that we are but a few dozen. We leave the unruly and the wicked behind. And in this war, and the Great one before, and the thousands more taking place on other worlds, we’ve been forced to abandon many more.

“That is where the specters of soldiers come from, conduit. That is why the dead look at you with such hatred. They feel the presence of our power--the power that should have freed them from the earth. In their lives they were wicked, and in the after they turn their wickedness to you.”

“How many of you were there before?” Peggy asked.

“Trillions. We were so many, that not all of us were even occupied with the tasks which Death asked of us. Many of the angels lived lives of contemplation, in different states of peace and struggle, on a planet in a very empty solar system.”

“Jesus,” Dugan said. “Jesus that’s what I saw.”

“It is difficult to comprehend the destruction of an entire fraction of the universe as you saw it,” Zazael said. “I wish I could take the time to heal your mind, but even being here--I am away from my tasks for too long.”

“How?” Dugan demanded. “I saw it less than four years ago.”

“You will be able to see the destruction through your instruments soon. The cosmic force of it had only just reached earth, the wave coming ahead of light, and you were in the basement of one who sought out doorways to that energy. It was chance alone, I fear.”

“Yeah. Lucky me.”

Gabe’s hand on Dugan’s shoulder steadied him.

“Four-hundred years ago,” Monty chimed in, his voice straining against exhaustion. “That was when the order of the necromancers came into being.”

“The war that is coming needed you,” the angel said, staring down at Steve. “And so I restored you before your soul had gone too far. I did not think it would go so far as to leave you with these gifts. We did not want your spirit, or your will. We had hoped for your brute force.”

“Brute force?” Steve asked, his brow cocked.

“It doesn’t matter now. This isn’t what we wanted. We expected something else. We expected what we saw through the tear which allowed us to see you in other universes.”

Steve thought of the other version of him again, some with broad chests and in a uniform of stars and stripes.

“Captain America?”

Zazael nodded.

Steve knew they were staring at him, wondering what any of it meant. Steve turned his fury to the angel.

“To hell with what you want,” Steve said. “You wanted me, you got me, as is. So what the hell do we do now that the universe is at stake?”

“I don’t know,” Zazael said through gritted teeth.

Steve blanched.

“You don’t--you don’t know? You don’t know,” Steve said, laughing. “That’s really great. You changed my life, you took--you took the life I was supposed to have from me. From all of us. You messed with us this much and now you don’t know what to do with me.”

“The plan needs to change. You weren’t what we had intended. Samael gave you too much, and you had a will that we had not expected. To control those gifts that we weren’t prepared for you to have, it’s unprecedented for one of your kind. The power of your will is too much. So now we have to ask you to do what will be hardest for you.”

“What’s that?”

“We need you to do nothing.”

It wasn’t just Steve that stared at the angel with contempt. It was Peggy, and every Commando. Steve had not been alone when he travelled across Europe, digging up old books, finding the malachite, storming Berlin. They did not just do all of that to defeat the threat of the Empire, but to find out what the angel wanted. After it all, that is what it requested.

“What do you mean, nothing?” Peggy asked.

The sharpness in her voice was enough to make even Zazael recoil.

“He must not interfere with time as it is laid out now,” Zazael said. “There is too much at stake, and he’s already changed everything.”

“You’re blaming him?” Peggy shouted. “After all you’ve done to him, the way you’ve changed everything, you and this _Thanatos_ \--“

“Thanos.”

“Be quiet.”

Every head in the room craned around to get a good look at Peggy’s indignant face, and it was clear that she either didn’t see the expressions of shock in their faces, or she simply didn’t care.

“I beg your--,” Zazael began.

“Now you listen to me,” Peggy continued, and she held her machine gun at ease as she talked. “We’re in the middle of a war, a war fought with forces you could have stopped but didn’t, and you expect Steve to just _give up_?”

“He must.”

“Or what?”

“Or everybody is going to die.” 

“No, you listen to the lady,” Steve said. “We’re not giving up.”

Zazael narrowed his eyes as Steve.

“You disobey the order of angels?” Zazael asked. “You disobey Death?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Steve and Peggy said together.

“How dare--“

“You don’t get to tell me what the terms of this deal is,” Steve said, pointing his finger, causing the angel to glare. “You need me, and we all know it, so cut the bull. You want me to be your soldier in this big fight that might not come for years? That means you pay an asking price.”

“We gave you back your life. We can command you, or we take it away.”

“You won’t, because then you’ve lost me, and whatever allies you needed me to find.”

“What kind of price could you possibly think we’d be willing to pay? Do you want your precious lover back? That’s not within the realm of--“

“The soldiers.”

Zazael blinked, cocking his head to the side.

“The soldiers?” Zazael asked, slow and uncomprehending.

“All these soldiers you’ve abandoned,” Steve said. “I want them to rest. I want you to do your job. I know you can’t keep up with all the dead, but at least let these men be at peace. They don’t deserve to suffer like this. They don’t deserve to get angrier and angrier because they don’t understand why they can’t rest.”

“I cannot disobey Death’s orders. She has shown us how to divide the universe, and some must be left behind. It is a fair system of balance.”

“It’s not fair for someone to die in war and realize they can’t rest after paying the price for other people’s freedom. They get to go home, or they get to rest. There’s no in-between. If you don’t understand that, we’re not on the same side.”

“We can’t defy Her.”

“Then we’re done here.”

They could see the strain of shock behind the face that had been Zemo’s. It hadn’t expected this.

“You _will_ fight in the coming war,” Zazael said, nothing but a hollow command. “We brought you back for that singular purpose.”

“I don’t give a damn. What makes me worth bringing back, but you can’t take the time to make sure the dead are taken care of? I thought that was the point of you.”

Something more passed over Zazael’s face. There was a struggle there, an indignity struck with realization, like hot metal being softened by fire and a hammer-blow.

“I can’t defy Her,” Zazael tried again.

“Why the hell not?” Steve yelled.

“She is so powerful--“

“But she’s hiding, and she needs you.”

“I’m just a servant.”

“No you’re not. You brought me back from the dead, and we know you can stop these soldiers from suffering.”

“You’re asking me to defy Death Herself?”

Zazael’s voice was more full of fear and uncertainty than Steve thought possible.

“For these men?” Steve said. “Yes. Then I’ll do it. I’ll prepare for what’s coming. I’ll fight in your war. But like hell I’m doing nothing while I wait for it.”

Zazael lowered his eyes as it thought. It was clear that the angel didn’t comprehend something, and was trying to come up for the words to ask.

“You did not ask for him back,” Zazael said, his voice full of wonder.

The exhaustion weighed his shoulders down. Steve’s fingers clutched at Bucky’s body. He shook his head and made a small exhale.

“I figured I had room for one request,” Steve said. “I’m not going to be selfish. I haven’t seen Bucky wandering around like the others. He’s not a haunter. And he’s probably too far away to get back now. I’m letting him go. Now you gotta help them. All of them. No soldier gets left behind, no matter who they fought for.”

Zazael stared at Steve as if he were a strange creature he couldn’t understand, this angel which had travelled the universe and ferried the dead to Death. The mouth that had belonged to Zemo opened and closed. He then turned his gaze to Monty.

Not Monty, but what Monty had clutched in his hand. The case of lead, locked with wards.

Zazael tilted his head, as though he were listening for something.

“If I can see the gem,” the angel said. “There may be more that I can do.”

When the angel gestured to the box, Steve saw a mist rising from him which glowed and evaporated. Zemo, even dead, was failing to contain the angel. He was burning as Steve had almost burned before he’d gained the strength from Erskine’s serum, and the reinforcement of Dernier’s tattoos.

“Open it,” Peggy ordered.

They all turned to her, to ask without words. She nodded.

Morita took the case from Monty’s weary arm. He brought it to the feet of the angel, brushed off the chalk wards, and opened it.

The angel lowered himself, and Morita reeled back. Steve remembered Morita’s fear at opening the door the first time, at his knowledge of an angel’s energy, the same energy which had frightened him away.

The Malachite tugged up as Zazael beckoned it, and Steve, not for the first time, felt like the stone had a personality. It seemed curious to meet the angel, and there was a pleasant hum from it.

Zazael didn’t touch the gem, but the fingertips that had lately belonged to Zemo danced in the air to pull it closer. He surrounded it with a circle of hovering fingertips.

“This can help the dead?” Steve asked.

“And you shall be rewarded,” Zazael replied.

Steve’s brow furrowed and he was about to ask how, but his eyes shut tight at the appearance of a brilliant, green light. It was not a flash bulb this time. It covered everything in verdant hues, the bleached church adopting the brush-stroke of green.

“Bury it deep,” Zazael’s voice echoed in the church. “The coming darkness must not find it.”

Just as quickly as he had appeared, the angel of Death was gone. For a moment, the entire world was white. Steve blinked into a darker world, but a world with shapes and edges.

Zemo’s body was a pile on the ground, empty of anything. The Malachite hovered in the air, shook, and dropped back into the box. The stone was pulsing, and Steve thought he detected a hum of happiness. Steve watched something like breath escape from it, and then it dissipated. The stone was quiet, and its light dim. Some unseen force shut the lid with a snap.

The yell that came from the body Steve was holding was human, and so terrible. Steve thought his heart would stop at the shock, but a moment later he was grappling with his own inability to believe that the body in his lap was moving anew.  

Bucky scrambled to find a grasp on anything. The first thing his hands found were the sleeves of the jacket Steve was wearing. Then there was recognition in Bucky’s eyes.

Steve’s heart was a thing made of hummingbird wings. He tried not to hope, afraid of the crushing weight that would come if what he was seeing wasn’t real, his mouth open in a wordless gasp.

Bucky’s eyes came up to meet Steve’s. They were clear of the iciness, but the darker blue that was the familiar to Steve had gone away, replaced by inky, deep black. In the sparkle of life and the pressing down of his brows, he saw Bucky looking out of those eyes. The color, or lack of it, didn’t matter.

“Steve?” gasped Bucky.

Steve smiled, grasped the side of Bucky’s face. There was still a desperate strain, begging the universe to let this be real, to give him this.

“Yeah,” Steve mumbled, and he heard the oncoming thickness in his throat. “It’s me, Buck.”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Bucky babbled. “This isn’t--I made a deal. It’s too soon. I made a deal, you can’t be here. I gave you my time. Why are you here?”

And then Bucky cried out as he tried to twist away. His eyes went wide at the sight of the ragged edge of shoulder where his left arm was supposed to be connected. The pain in his wrecked body came out in a yelp, and then the realization hit them both at the same time.

Bucky had thought he was still dead until the pain, and the horror at the new knowledge of a missing limb.

Steve smiled to give him reassurance, to make Bucky focus on a kind face, but he didn’t know if it was making a difference. Steve didn’t have time to think of himself, or the wrenching in his chest. His fingers were numb as he tried to cling to the late and newly awakened Bucky Barnes. He reached down, grabbed Bucky’s right hand.

“Hey,” Steve said, unable to keep the tremble out of his voice. “You’re here, Bucky. You’re back. Look at me. I’m not dead, you ain’t either. You got a heartbeat. Here, feel. It’s right there. You’re alive. We made it, it’s over.”

Steve held Bucky’s hand over his chest, pressing the palm into the chest, hoping Bucky could feel his own heartbeat as Steve could. And then Bucky’s eyes were distant. Bucky was grappling with where he was. He was seeing the living world, Steve there, and the destruction around them--the church ceiling letting in a shaft of light, the snow falling through it, Zemo’s lifeless body near his feet.

Bucky’s breath began to rattle and gasp. Steve was about to weep at the sound of that breath, so comforting to hear it, but he was terrified at the strain in it. It was shallow, rasping. Steve’s face fell. What Steve was hearing was the first shuddering breaths of panic.

The scream that ripped out of Bucky’s throat echoed up to the rafters of the church, with the mounting pressure of a sea shattering a levy of solid rock and stone.

#

Extraction from Berlin had been hard. Peggy had secured a safehouse. In the chaos, so many people and soldiers were on the streets, trying to find out what had happened. Their path was blocked more than once.

It was in a smaller neighborhood just outside of Berlin, in the basement inside of a brewery. Allied spies had been using it throughout the war. The chambers for fermentation were made of ancient stone that did not allow noise to echo into the streets above.

Peggy made it a priority to give Steve and Bucky their own room. It was a little room meant for storing machinery, but had been cleared out to give them room for a bed. It had been placed next to a disused still. The harsh glow of a single bulb hanging from a wire was all that lit the space.

There wouldn’t be any more words from Bucky for the rest of the night. He made strained cries, and Steve thought he might be weeping, but he just grabbed on to Steve with his remaining arm and held Steve close. Steve let him be for the rest of the night, didn’t demand that he talk or tell him anything. He just let Bucky cling to him as they tried to go to sleep in the same bed. Whatever was happening in Bucky’s mind forbade sleep and he would only stare.

He refused let go. Every time Steve wanted to relieve himself or get something to eat, and remind Bucky to do the same, it would take five minutes of reassuring Bucky that they would remain alive, even if Bucky weren’t holding on to him.

Steve fell asleep sometime after sundown and then woke with a start, his body somehow knowing he wasn’t supposed to be asleep. He checked the face of the man lying next to him. Bucky was asleep.

Steve sighed, relieved. It was short-lived. The worry returned as he saw how Bucky was sleeping. Bucky had always been a bed hog. He would usually hit the mattress with his chest and wouldn’t come up until dawn, though his arm would drape out and his legs would spread to take up most of the lower half of the bed.

It was the first time he’d seen Bucky make himself small. He was curled and on his side, and his face was tense, the face of a man battling pain. Steve would have woken him, but the idea that he could interrupt a sleep that Bucky was so reluctant to take seemed the worst idea.

It was so surreal that it could not be anything but real. He had him back. It was Bucky. Steve had been sleeping beside a ghost, who was no longer a ghost.

Steve reached out to touch him. Bucky was solid. He wasn’t an apparition. He wasn’t an unfair dream he would wake up from, the betrayal of really believing Bucky hadn’t died souring waking life.

Bucky was real. He could be touched, seen by others, and he was _there_.

His fingers touched the wound that had killed him. If he had been what they had presumed at first, a ghoul, it would be fresh and open, and his blood would have been congealed and black. It was no different from an old war wound, just bigger. He’d seen many soldiers with scars that looked like that, and the flesh pulled in to a strange pock. Yet it was a killing wound.

His fingers traveled up to the seam of black that ran up Bucky’s left shoulder. It was like a stain that seeped up and onto his shoulder and chest. It still felt like silk where it was stained black.

Bucky shivered at the gentle, tickling touch and jerked awake. Steve pulled his hand away, but less than a second later it was caught.

Steve looked into black eyes as Bucky searched his face.

Bucky’s lips were on his, and it was desperate, hard, splitting Steve’s chapped lips. He’d never been so glad to taste blood in his mouth.

“Am I alive?” Bucky murmured right into his mouth.

“You’re alive,” Steve said.

“My heart is beating?”

“It is.”

“I’m here and you’re here.”

“We are.”

“We are.”

_We are_. It was just a little statement, but Bucky needed to know it wasn’t a lie.

“Where were you?” Steve asked.

Bucky’s eyes were wild as he searched in his mind.

“I don’t--“ Bucky began.

“No, it’s okay,” Steve reassured him. “You don’t gotta tell me anything you don’t wanna. Just maybe go back to sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep. I think being dead is a nice enough nap, you know?”

The way he’d ended the statement had Steve expecting a little deprecatory laugh. It never came.

“You can just rest a bit,” Steve said. “Just lay here. I can talk if you wanna. I’ll tell you about how our teams are doing. They just started training and I’ve been following the Brooklyn women’s league.”

“I was--,” Bucky began.

Steve let Bucky have the silence, see if he could get the words.

“Was it like being asleep?” Steve asked. “I don’t remember when I--when I had that fever.”

Bucky’s face collapsed. He’d never seen him break, not like this, not every muscle in his face refusing to work. Steve wondered exactly how many times Bucky’s brave face had laid over this. The only time Steve remembered anything close to seeing him like that was when he’d heard that Bucky’s mother had died, and he’d rushed over to be there. Bucky had been leaning over the table, inconsolable but trying to make a list of people to call, his face barely containing what Steve now saw. But this was Bucky broken apart entirely. He had needed to be strong so many times before. This was the face of a man tired of being strong.


	16. Epilogue

**_V-E Day--London, UK_ **

There was no such thing as a quiet place in England.

Steve loved the joy and the relief. These people had lived through the Blitz. The bar they were in was half-rebuilt from rubble, very hastily but well-reassembled, so that people would have a place to celebrate in a world that was newly imaged to exist without a routine of bombs. It was the same joy he had walked through in a liberated Paris--an earned joy. A joy of people who had endured and found they weren’t doing it for nothing.

He looked to his left and smiled at the laughing, drinking Bucky Barnes. There was joy in the crinkle of his eyes, but also a distance as he looked both at the celebration and beyond it. His eyes, now black, glittered with memory both firmly grasped and faintly held. He tried to hide his thousand-yard stare behind the length of hair that he hadn’t let them cut over the four months of his rehabilitation and further work in London.

Men and women both thanked him for his service with the full emotion released by drink when they saw he had pinned his left sleeve to his chest. They knew he was a wounded soldier, and had assumed he had given nearly all. Steve’s chest swelled with pride when they gushed their thankfulness. Bucky didn’t give _nearly_ his all. He gave everything. Steve wished he could let the whole world know, but what would they say if they knew there was a dead man strolling the streets of London?

“Have you met Steve?” Bucky would sometimes say to someone touching him too much in their zeal to thank him. “You oughtta know, this one, he’s a hero. He’s saved thousands of lives.”

Bucky would clap him on the shoulder so hard that Steve would reel back. Some of them would thank Steve, but most couldn’t push past their skepticism. The footage of the attack on Berlin had been released months before, and had changed the landscape of the war. Everybody knew about the dead, of ghouls and daemonics at least, but nobody had been quite able to recognize the slight man drinking with his friends as the small, thin soldier that had held up a star-spangled shield of light to protect Allied prisoners and German civilians alike.

When Bucky had a break from drinking, he’d let his hand drop and Steve would hold it in his. Nobody would see that small gesture, assuming the two men near the corner were backed close together to make room for the crowd. They didn’t know that Bucky gripped so tight because he feared he would float away without a hold on Steve.

Steve had told Bucky that it was fine to stay in, even when history was happening in the streets. They’d brought in beds, real beds, when they began to treat Bucky like a recovering wounded soldier, and it had become very comfortable in the grey box they had been thinking of as “their” room. But Bucky was restless as soon as he’d heard the announcement of victory.

“We have to get up there,” Bucky had said, glancing above him, knowing the streets of London were above the curved roof of the repurposed Underground maintenance shed.

“You don’t have to,” Steve reminded him, one more time.

Bucky had smiled and had already put on a good coat when he began convincing Steve.

Steve was proud of him. He was doing well for a man who screamed at least once a night. He almost looked like he was enjoying himself. All Bucky needed was to reassure himself that the world was solid, and if it took Steve’s hand feeling like it would be crushed, he would endure.

It had taken four months for him to get that far. Four months where he would hardly talk, and wouldn’t let anybody cut his hair. Four months of pulling him out of his head by degrees. Four months of being pulled away to finish what was left of the Empire to find Bucky pulled back into his head in his absence. Bucky would grasp at him when he returned, and Steve let himself be an anchor.

“Do you think there’s someplace quieter we could go?” Bucky asked, leaning into Steve’s chair.

Steve barely heard him, but he nodded. They passed Peggy and the other commandos, who booed and groaned at the sight of them departing. Steve gave a gesture to let them know that they’d be just a minute.

Bucky’s strides were even and long. They were in no rush, no more walking like they had to be somewhere. They pulled away from the pubs, but the streets were still crowded. There was only a bit of thinness up a narrow road. When Bucky spotted a wide alley, his pace quickened and he hurried into the shadow of it.

He was no longer steady on his feet as he rushed, toppling and tripping over himself. Steve knew it wasn’t the beer. He’d nursed half of the same one for an hour. Steve ran after him, but couldn’t reach him before Bucky collapsed against a wall, his forehead pressed against century-old stone. Bucky waved him away when he tried to help, and Steve pulled his reaching hands away. Steve just let his hands dangle close because the inevitable thing that would happen, and did, was that Bucky would grasp a hand to steady himself.

He tugged down so hard that Steve was sure his arms would come out of their sockets. He was on the ground with Bucky so quickly that it was the most awkward way he had ever been hugged. His limbs were akimbo and uncomfortable, but he just let Bucky grab at him.

“It’s over,” Steve reminded him. “We won. It’s okay.”

Bucky sniffed, straightened. Bucky’s eyes, new in their darkness but so familiar in their expression, caught streetlight. Spots of white light shook in water that never fell.

“I’m alright,” Bucky said with a nod, releasing this awkward grab on Steve. Steve only pulled away just enough to untangle himself, but stayed close enough for Bucky to reach. They sat with their bodies resting against the wall of the building.

Bucky’s hand was shaking and Steve’s instinct was to hold it with his own. He knew he could steady Bucky if he could just hold his hand, but he also knew Bucky hated to be touched without warning when he was shaking.

But it was Bucky that reached for Steve’s hand again, the trembling subsiding after only a few seconds. He didn’t only hold it, but idly played with Steve’s fingers for a while before lifting them and kissing the pads of each one the way the beads of a rosary were meant to be prayed over, one at a time.

It was the first time Bucky had touched him like a lover since they had kissed in Berlin. Steve’s chest swelled as his heart grew too large and pushed his lungs aside, banishing his breath. It was not just love, but hope that made his chest felt filled to bursting.

Steve laid his forehead on Bucky’s temple. Bucky sighed, his shoulders dropping.

“You know, I got to go out pretty lucky,” Bucky said. “I got exactly what I wanted out of my life before it ended.”

“What did you want?” Steve asked, knowing what the answer might be.

“I got to spend the rest of it with you.”

Bucky’s smile pulled on the strain of the bittersweet. Steve forced himself to smile so that maybe Bucky could have permission to really smile, too.

“Now you get more life with me,” Steve said with a rasp in his laugh. “What a nightmare.”

“Don’t,” Bucky said.

The smile was knocked off Steve’s face with just that word. He felt a pang as he knew he had said the wrong thing, but didn’t understand what it was just yet.

“Buck,” Steve whispered. “What’s wrong?”

Bucky laughed, throwing his head back. It was more bitter and uncontrolled than Steve had ever known it to be.

“It was just easier,” Bucky said. “It was so clear. The choice to sell my years. That was easy. I just needed to do it. And then I knew I was going to die, and soon, and then I knew what I wanted to do with what I had left. It was manageable, you know? But what happens now? What if I can’t protect you anymore? What if--?”

“I’m not your charge,” Steve said. “I can take care of myself.”

“No, you can’t. You do something stupid every ten minutes. Shut up, you know you do. God, I don’t want you to be any other way. But I can’t keep you safe. I mean--look at me.”

“I am.”

Bucky hadn’t just mean his missing arm. He’d meant his shaking hands and the screams in the night. He meant crumpling in an alley when the only thing he had been frightened of that day had been other people. He meant the dream of after-death he wouldn’t talk of, and the danger of being not himself.

Steve cradled Bucky’s face with his hand. Bucky leaned into the touch.

“You’re the world’s biggest idiot,” Steve said.

“What?” Bucky said, his brows coming together to point to the sky.

“You think the only reason I keep you around is because you’re useful? You think you only have value  ‘cause you can do something for someone else? For me? Bucky, do you know me at all? Look at _me_. The whole world tellin’ me no, and you the only one saying yes. You think I’m gonna do that to you?”

Steve implored him with narrowed, clear eyes. He wanted Bucky to see, to remember. All the times he’d been turned away. Short, skinny, can’t breathe right, one bad ear, two bad eyes, flat feet and all the stuff besides. Signs of a weak mind, once even told by a doctor that society would be better if Sarah had left him on a stoop in the cold, the same thing Zemo had said afterwards. Bucky’s eyes lost the narrowness of sorrow as he looked at Steve and he remembered.

#

The SPR base was too far. The hotel four streets away had one room left. It was in an old hotel that had survived the bombs. The room was higher than all the others, in a loft like a tower. The hotel concierge warned that it was only available for one night, and it was their most expensive room. Steve and Bucky combined the cash in their pockets to afford it and then raced upstairs the moment they had the key.

They switched on the lights and saw that it was pretty snazzy for a small place, but Steve barely got a look at the four-poster bed, fireplace, and cushioned chairs and benches before Bucky grabbed him, turned him around.

Steve’s breath was nearly stopped in his lungs. He knew he should have taken the opportunity to breathe before Bucky kissed him, but his lungs were never exactly things that ever cooperated.

But Bucky wasn’t kissing him. He was holding Steve by the neck, hard enough to steer him. Steve’s whole world was nothing but what he could see with his eyes and his periphery, and in the dim room the whole world consisted of Bucky’s face. He felt himself being led and the journey from the door to the bed was a stumbling, clumsy and desperate odyssey.

Steve thought he was going to burst out of his body. Since Bucky had come back, they hadn’t kissed, except for the first night, and Bucky had still been out of his mind. They’d laid in bed, held hands, slept with their bodies close, but Steve knew he didn’t have the right to kiss him.

Bucky pressed him into the bed, spreading Steve’s legs by putting his own between them. Steve’s blood became as hot as magma. Bucky kissed him hard, and Steve felt the burn of the other man’s stubble as it pressed into his skin. He grabbed Bucky by his jacket, pulling him in until their bodies were flush. Then he pulled in more, as if he could get Bucky inside him with that motion alone.

“I’ve never done this one-handed before,” Bucky said.

“At least not with another person, right?” Steve joked.

Bucky pressed his mouth into a thin line, and Steve knew he had plans to get him back for that one. Steve couldn’t help the smugness on his face.

Bucky stripped off Steve’s clothes like he were revealing a delicate painting that had been stored away in an archive. Steve was vibrating with sensation and getting harder. He wished Bucky would, for once, just tear his clothes off. Bucky opened Steve’s shirt, folding both sides open, then kissed the hollow of his belly, a long kiss, breathing in deep.

Steve felt selfish as he stepped outside his own desires. He was in a rush to have Bucky again, like he’d been waiting forever. He’d never considered that wherever Bucky had been, he’d been thinking of him. Wherever Bucky had been, he might have been there longer than Steve had spent missing him.

He let him do whatever he liked for however long he liked. What Bucky wanted to do was touch him with lingering fingers, his lips dragging across skin in ways that were barely a kiss. The only way Steve could resist grabbing at him was to lie still, listen to his own breath, and grab at the sheets under him. Steve bit his bottom lip as he admitted that this was better than what he had wanted to do, better than the sex he’d wanted to dive into, better than any moment he’d ever had with him in the before. But Steve was still shaking with rising stress of arousal. He bit his lip harder because the words were going to tumble out if he didn’t, and he’d swore he wouldn’t say it, not ever.

The words burst out of his mouth anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Steve spit out in a puff of breath.

Bucky stopped and Steve felt like sobbing, but out of relief or regret, he didn’t know. He propped himself up on his elbows to look at Bucky, who was still draped between his legs. Bucky was looking up at Steve, dark eyes under a forehead wrinkled with confusion.

“I messed around,” Steve said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should have waited for you. I knew I wanted you, but I messed around.”

It took a moment for Bucky to comprehend, but then it was there, and they both knew what he was talking about.

“February?” Bucky whispered.

“I was with a lot of people. Guys. Dames. Just whoever. I don’t know what it was but I just--“

“Steve--“

“No. Be quiet, will ya? I’m tryin’ to--“

“ _Steve_.”

“I should have waited for you. I should have told you instead of getting away from you. I’m a god-damned coward, Bucky. I ran from ghosts. I told myself that. They were everywhere, so that must have been what I was getting away from, right? Then I just fell into strangers, and put myself away in that hospital when I couldn’t do that anymore.”

“You don’t have to--“

“I couldn’t stand myself. I wasn’t scared of those things I was seeing, just what you’d say. I’m sorry. I’m a god-damned coward and I’m sorry.”

“If you call yourself a coward one more time,” Bucky said, the upset beginning to seethe through his expression.

“I don’t deserve you,” Steve cried out.

  That was it. That made Bucky’s eyes go wide, and then he was really angry. Angry enough that Steve shut up, his breath hitching before he held it.

Bucky grabbed Steve’s face in his hand and pulled him close, Steve’s face crushed ridiculously as Bucky’s expression pinched into anger.

“I was _in_ the gem,” Bucky’s voice shuddered out.

Steve didn’t understand and it showed in his face. Then Bucky kept talking.

“Do you know what it did to me?” Bucky continued.

Steve could feel his chest constrict. He was preparing for the worst, to hear about pain, suffering, hell. He was quiet, to let Bucky just say it.

“It gave me paradise,” Bucky finished.

“It--what?” Steve whispered.

“It can do that. All those souls inside it, it wants them to be happy. It tried to make me happy. It tried again, and again, and again. It made me a world, kept remaking it every time it failed and had to make me forget. But I’d always remember. It wasn’t right. It was never right. It was never real. Do you know how I knew, every time?”

Steve shook his head, almost imperceptive.

“You never once acted like a little dumbass,” Bucky said through a grin.

“Hey!” Steve shouted, his first instinct.

And then Bucky laughed. Steve smiled, had never been so glad to hear a familiar sound in his whole life.

“There you are,” Bucky whispered. Then a sigh, long, filled with relief as he smoothed Steve’s hair. “In there you would have waited for me. You didn’t. You messed up, and then you came back because you thought it was the right thing to do. That’s what you do, every time, once you know what’s right. You’re real, you’re here, and I don’t give a damn about anything else.”

Bucky buried his face in Steve’s torso, and even though his shirtsleeves still constricted them, Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and head, kissed the crown of his skull.

He had no idea until that moment that Bucky wasn’t scared because of the memories of the things done by the shadow in his body, or the rawness of being ripped apart, dying, and then being dragged back into reality. Until just then, Bucky was doubting that any of what he was seeing was real.

He was real, and he would show Bucky.

It was some of the clumsiest grasping he ever remembered them attempting. Bucky was still not used to everything about having only one arm, and Steve wasn’t making an effort to be smooth about anything. He hadn’t even made sure he was all the way out of his clothes.

Bucky wrapped his right arm under Steve’s torso to press their bodies together. Steve’s legs steadied Bucky’s torso by opening up and pressing against his ribs. He squeezed with his thighs and lowered his hips and Bucky thrust into the open space to destroy the emptiness.

They lost themselves in just the feeling of their hips grinding together. Steve’s head fell back, his hand clutching the sheet above him as Bucky kissed and nibbled at his earlobe.

“What do you think about Ithaca?” Bucky asked.

“What?” Steve laughed out, blinking with fluttering lashes as he slid slightly out of the euphoria of Bucky’s touch.

“I think we should retire. We’ve done enough. How about Ithaca?”

“Why is it always Ithaca?”

“I like the sound of it.”

“You’ve never been there.”

“I meant the name of the place. We should see what a little place costs. You can look at classes,  ‘cause they got that college there. You could settle down and I’d keep the rest of the world out and you can draw for the rest of your life.”

“What are you gonna do, though?”

“You think there’s a market for a one-armed boxer?”

Bucky’s laugh was contained, but it broke off when Steve looked down at him.

“Buck, you can do whatever you want now,” Steve said. “The GI Bill, remember? Why don’t you take the classes?”

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky said.

“How many times have you dragged me to the science exhibits at fairs? Bucky? Come on, you’re allowed. You can think about what you want now. I know you can do whatever you want.”

Bucky opened his mouth to argue, but his jaw just moved a bit before he closed it. He laid his head down on the thin plane of Steve’s tattooed chest and let Steve run his hand through his hair. His kisses began to travel lazily and Steve closed his eyes. Just as he was beginning to wish for Bucky to be a little more aggressive, he felt strength in the grip around his waist. Steve heard the sound of tinkering metal. Bucky yanked Steve’s belt from his trousers and abandoned it on the mattress. Steve only waited until his trousers were past his knees before telling Bucky to go ahead.

They had given out everything anybody would need for sex like candy on Halloween. It was V-E day, after all. Everybody would be celebrating.

Bucky opened Steve up by degrees, with fingers slippery and slick from the small packet of lube. Steve’s mouth opened and didn’t seem to want to close at the sensations Bucky teased out in circles and gentle presses.

Bucky’s fingers were pushing into Steve, even and long strokes to bring out the noise from Steve’s throat. The slowness of it made Steve writhe. Steve’s hand was on Bucky’s left shoulder, propping him up. Steve felt Bucky shaking with the effort of supporting himself, and Steve decided he was ready for something else anyway.

He sat up and rolled Bucky onto his back. Steve kicked himself out of the trousers and shoes gathered around his ankles, but he didn’t care enough to slip off his open shirt. He pushed against Bucky’s chest with his right hand, and with his left he guided Bucky into him.

Steve had planned to do all the work, but Bucky lifted himself up to wrap his arm around Steve’s waist. They moved together, and the fabric of the canopy began to sway as they rocked. Steve closed his eyes as Bucky pressed his mouth to his collar, the feeling of pleasure beginning to build underneath his hips, growing out to fill up his entire body.

Steve needed leverage. His hand found his belt, and he wrapped it around Bucky’s chest, and grabbed the buckle like reins. Steve was pissed that he hadn’t thought of doing that before. He rocked his hips as he tried to suppress the sounds eking out of his throat.

Bucky stared with eyes shaking and mouth hanging open with wonder. The sight of being ridden and reined what was doing something to him even before Steve found his balance. Bucky breathed in hitches and grunts, and there was only one thing he could say that wasn't cursing at a hard rock of Steve's hips.

“It never felt like this in there,” Bucky said.

Steve came within minutes, but it was always quicker with Bucky pitching. He came after Bucky eked it out of him with strokes of his hand, a cry coming from deep in his throat. Bucky’s right hand was slick with what he’d fucked out of him. Steve wanted to hide as soon as he heard the sounds of his dying orgasm, ashamed by the shock of noises that came out of his open mouth. Then there was Bucky's face when Steve opened his eyes. He'd never seen wonder like it, and it was from the face of a man who'd been in the presence of angels.

Steve wanted to stay in that moment, but his legs were shaking. He rolled off Bucky, flopping bonelessly onto the mattress. He had just began to think about taking care of Bucky when he felt a hand on his arm.

Bucky flipped him onto his stomach, and Steve let the feeling of his comedown ride out as Bucky pressed into his back, his cock sliding between the pressure of his own hips and inside the hollow of Steve’s rear. He heard Bucky’s moan as he came, and felt the come press between his back and Bucky’s belly as Bucky collapsed onto him. Steve grunted at the weight, but he didn’t push him off--he knew Bucky needed that.

It had been building for a long time, the need for release, and it had to be release with Steve. Steve remembered Bucky telling him how he was the only one he ever wanted like this. When he’d said that, many things about Bucky had slid into place. Steve allowed the sweat and sex between them to mingle as Bucky buried his face in the hollow between Steve’s shoulder and neck. Steve hadn’t put a name for how he felt when they lay like that afterwards--the closest he could come to pinning it down was for Steve to think of himself as the luckiest guy ever born in Brooklyn.

“It’s over,” Bucky said, and Steve knew he wasn’t talking about the sex.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “We’re gonna go home.”

“Or Ithaca. Or anyplace we want to.”

Then Steve sighed, let what he was really thinking tumble out.

“I still want to help the SPR,” Steve said. “Or whatever it’s going to be. And the commandos. I can’t just abandon them.”

“Yeah, this is definitely real,” Bucky said as he laughed.

Bucky shoved Steve’s head slightly. Steve would have been annoyed, but he couldn’t really glare through his afterglow.

“I’m serious,” Steve said.

“I know,” Bucky mumbled. “And I’m still gonna be there. You and me, wandering around, digging up creepy relics and saving the day. Maybe even getting that secret code word from Houdini.”

“Now that would be a neat trick.”

“Let’s do that instead of Ithaca.”

“What?”

Steve craned his head, but he still couldn’t see Bucky’s face.

“I know you,” Bucky said. “You can’t  ‘retire.’ You won’t do that. You can draw anywhere, and I can learn anything anywhere, but we’ve gotta be where something’s going wrong. Don’t we?”

Steve turned over, held Bucky’s face in his hand. Bucky’s gaze was warm, flushed, his stubble a comforting texture under Steve’s calloused hands.

“You know, nobody’s gotten that the way you do, Buck,” Steve said through a smile.

“I love you too, kid,” Bucky whispered.

Steve kissed him, and the celebration outside pierced through the thin, old windows. It was a muffled sound, a happy one, and for the first time in years, Steve knew the world outside would let them be for as long as they needed, even though it was still carrying on.

 

**Albany, New York--April 1945**

  

“Stop fidgeting, will ya?” Steve said.

“It’s just--clients?” Bucky said. “We have clients now.”

“You’ve come face-to face with Nazi ghouls. You’ve been possessed. You’ve had your arm cut off. You’ve been dead. What’re you scared of?”

“People with money.”

Steve couldn’t say anything to that, just gave a deferential nod.

They stood in front of the massive cherry double-doors and looked up at the high wall that was cutting into the sky. The spire of the faÃ§ade was too much like a church for Steve’s taste. Gorgeous, gothic architectural lines, but who would want to live in it?

“Hey, c’mere, you big mess,” Steve said.

He reached up to fix where Bucky’s collar was turning up. Bucky rolled his head away the same way Steve remembered he would when either of their mothers cleaned him up. Bucky was always neat, liked his clothes and his hair to be sharp, and even though Steve was trying to fix him up, he knew Bucky thought he was making it worse.

“You know, I’m still not used to this,” Bucky said.

“Used to--?” Steve began. “Oh.”

Bucky was measuring the inches Steve had gained with his hand. Steve snorted a laugh and batted Bucky’s hand away.

“You know, I’ve been trying to fatten you up since the first time I brought you over to my folks’,” Bucky said. “If I’d known all it would take is some dabbling in the occult, I would have saved a ton on food.”

“Well, if your mom’s breakfast plates couldn’t fatten me up, then that would have been our next resort,” Steve said with a smile. “I swear that was always forty pounds of eggs and sausage.”

“And some hash, and beans, and pancakes --”

They trailed off, both tired of trying to make simple conversation.

“I can’t believe we’re about to walk into a haunted house,” Bucky said.

“It’s our job,” Steve replied.

“And you know what’s nuts? We actually chose it.”

There was a clang from behind them, and they both spun around to look.

Dernier’s ire went from quiet to explosive in the turn of a second as he gestured at the piece of Dugan equipment lying in the driveway. Morita, his French still conversational, could only stand with his arms open, as if asking what in the hell he did wrong. Gabe came from around the other side of the car and started arguing in Morita’s defense, but Jim still stood there as though the both of them were now ganging up on him. Monty watched from the passenger seat of the car, as amused as he would be watching a chaotic tennis match.

“I still feel like I don’t know what we’re doing,” Steve muttered as he watched the chaos.

“We never did,” Bucky replied. “That’s what we get for being the first wave of somethin’.”

The doors opened with a creak; the butler standing behind the door shot his eyes at the both of them. They knew he’d heard the clang and had opened the door to investigate. At the sight of the three men arguing over a large piece of metal, he went from alert to exhausted.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” the butler said. “You’re expected. Please, come in.”

Bucky and Steve nodded, stepped inside and into the elaborate parlor. The butler took both of their coats and hats.

“Thanks, Jeeves,” Bucky said with a nod.

The butler actually smiled, just as Steve was going to elbow Bucky in the ribs for being rude.

“The master of the house usually refers to me as Jarvis, sir,” the butler said. “But I always like to hear that people are still reading Wodehouse. If you’ll come with me.”

Jarvis brought them to the library. It had two stories of packed shelves, and Steve looked up at the ceiling-high collection with wonder. One half of his mouth was pulled up, but he hadn't noticed his own pleased smile until he saw the way Bucky looked at him. He bowed his head, still bashful now that he knew that look was reserved for him. He slid a loose piece of hair back into place.

Peggy was standing with the nurse who had helped them in Austria, Private Maria Lorraine, and a man with dark hair and a mustache. Peggy smiled at them, a smile meant to dispel their nerves. Steve gave her a grateful nod.

“You’re smaller than you look in the pictures,” said their client, Howard Stark.

Steve could feel the annoyance radiating off of Bucky, but Steve thought Stark was a little funny. He just shrugged.

“Don’t need to be big for what I do,” Steve said.

Howard shrugged, as a way to say “fair enough.”

“Howard was just filling me in on the situation here,” Peggy said. “I know what we’re dealing with. I’ve seen it before.”

“We’ve been talking for a half an hour, and you’re just now getting it?” Howard said. “I got some kind of creepy crawly in here, right?”

Steve narrowed his eyes at Stark, who hadn't just looked at Peggy like he didn’t believe she knew what she was talking about. He had taken the time to size her up from heels to hair-do, to find her wanting. Steve had thought Howard was funny before, was willing to give him the chance to keep being that way. Now Stark had lost the opportunity.

“Your mansion is not haunted, Mr. Stark,” Peggy said curtly.

“You’re charging me money to tell me that I got some leaky pipes?” Howard snapped.

“No,” Maria chimed in. “But you do need to get a plumber in here.”

“You don’t live in a haunted house,” Peggy continued. “You’re cursed.”

Steve watched Howard Stark react. Steve watched a recognized genius grapple with the concept. It was the face of someone who was willing to give the paranormal investigators a chance after seeing the footage out of Berlin, but whose faith didn’t stretch all that far.

A sound like scuttling rat feet sounded in the roof and they all craned their heads to look. Steve saw a glimpse of it, but knew the others hadn’t.

Until he turned to see Bucky staring with unbelieving eyes. Steve’s heart skipped a beat.

Bucky had seen it, too.

  

**Captain America will return in _The Magician_**

 

**Author's Note:**

> The sequel which was a wip for this fic has been deleted--I'll be posting a revised version of it soon.


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